


The Erasure of the Female Kings of Egypt

by soft_october



Series: A Dragon Ate My Term Paper [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, College, F/M, Friendship, Slow Burn, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:41:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5695177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soft_october/pseuds/soft_october
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moira Lavellan was going to spend her last year at grad school finishing her thesis, getting her masters, and spending time with her friends. She was not, under any circumstances, going to think about sleeping with her thesis adviser. </p><p>Life has other plans. </p><p>A College AU featuring friendship, thinly veiled flirting disguised as passionate discussions of history, rugby matches, romantic tension, drinking competitions, and cameos from everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. September

“God damn it, Dorian!”

Moira slammed her free hand over her eyes. Her best friend and roommate, Dorian, laughed in surprise, fumbling and falling off the couch in a tangle of naked limbs. The spectacle was mostly hidden by the back of the sofa, but Moria could safely assume she had just met Dorian’s newest flavor of the week. This gentleman began a mad scramble for his various articles of clothing, which seemed to form a trail from his current location to the front door.

“We talked about this!” Moira grumbled, peeking out from between her middle and ring fingers. They might be ruining her furniture, but at least Dorian knew how to pick them. “Put a sock on the door, or send a text or something!”

“And ruin the moment?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, his eyes dancing with amusement. Mr. Six-Pack, Moira’s new name for Dorian’s one-afternoon stand, mumbled an apology and fled out the still-open front door shoeless.

“Ruin the moment? How about ruin my couch! I bought that couch.”

“For five dollars at a yard sale, I know, love. Tell you what. After I’ve desecrated this one beyond all redemption I’ll buy you a new one. I promise the next one will even be mold-free!”

Moira shook her head and tried in vain to suppress a smile.

“What’s that one’s name?” she asked, lowering her hand.

Dorian chuckled.

“Peter or Paul or Mikey or something. Something Italian.”

“I’m calling him Mr. Six-Pack. You do have good taste, I’ll give you that.”

“My good taste is a matter of utmost pride,” Dorian replied, grinning. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would like to, perhaps, make myself more presentable.”

He wrapped the couch throw around his waist, rose to his feet and began a dignified march down the hallway to his bedroom. Moira rolled her eyes and headed toward the kitchen to make a thorough search of the fridge and cabinets. She wanted some chocolate after the day she had had. She deserved chocolate. Needed chocolate.

Dorian joined her a few minutes later, a touch more respectable now in sweatpants and Fleet Foxes t-shirt. He found Moira kneeling on the counter by the sink, digging through the top shelf of the baking cabinet in a hopeless quest for chocolate chips.

“Bad day?” he ventured. Moira let out a growl, too frustrated to turn around.

“You could say I had a bad day. You could also say that Charles the II was kind of a lousy king.”

“You know I don’t understand it when you speak history, love. Is this about your thesis?” Moira finally hung her head in defeat and turned to face him.

“Yes,” she admitted. She adjusted herself so she sat on the counter, her back to the open cabinet. “Head of the Department said my original subject was ‘rather improper’ and told me to go with something ‘less daring.’”

“Do you always use air quotes when you talk?”

“Shush. Only in regards to the department head. She’s a bitch. Oh, and speaking of which, of course my adviser just has to be Professor Fen’harel.”

“Bless you?”

“Ugh it’s Welsh or Irish or something, I don’t know. He’s the bald one?” Dorian offered her a blank stare.

“I’m a law student, I wouldn’t know him if he danced naked in front of me.”

“Wow, thanks for that imagery. Point is, he’s a jerk. Had him last year for Ancient Civ and I could have bled all over my papers instead of handing them in and there would still be less red on them. I should have just stuck to being an English major.”

What she did not mention here Fen’Harel’s passion when he spoke of things thousands of years gone - how he would pace the front of the room in the throes of an interesting topic. Nor did she allude to the way she had seen his eyes flash the few times a student had asked a particularly interesting question, And she definitely did not disclose anything about his baritone voice, garnished with lilts that generations past had gifted him. She was upset because he was a jerk. That was the end of it. Moira picked at the hieroglyphic tattoos on her right wrist.

“Can’t you change advisers or something?”

“Change to who? Professor Anders doesn’t know anything about anything that happened more than four centuries ago - plus I’m not going to sit there and listen to his tinfoil hat conspiracies for a whole year - and I think it’s safe to say that Dr. Wynne is more than a little overwhelmed this year.”

Her voice had taken on a stained tone. She loved Dr. Wynne, but the woman decades she spent teaching were finally starting to show. Despite her obvious weariness, Dr. Wynne had already booked as many students as she was willing to take. Besides, her expertise was in East Asian studies, not ancient cultures.

“So no. It’s either Fen’harel or I don’t get my masters, and then if I don’t get my masters I’ll have to go back home and If I have to go back home then-”

“Whoa - whoa!” cried Dorian. “Let’s ease up for a second.”

“Yeah, you could just become a terrible writer and call it a day.” Dorian and Moira turned toward the door to see Varric smirking. “I interrupt something?”

“Just my daily anxiety attack,” Moira replied. “Did you just let yourself in?”

“Door was literally wide open. What’s going on in here?”

Moira filled him in as Dorian bustled around the kitchen. She was just getting to the part where she would have to move back home and her life would be utterly over when Dorian pushed a steaming mug of hot chocolate with a thick layer of whipped cream into her hands. Moira let out a small sigh of pleasure and ceased her tirade.

“It’s 80 degrees outside!” chided Varric.

“Emergency chocolate has no season,” said Dorian, airily, waving the words away. Moira sipped it gratefully, ignoring the smear of whipped cream that immediately attached itself to her nose.

“I’m sorry about the thesis,” said Varric. “And about the adviser. I had that guy the first year after I transferred. Some kid said that Lithuania was in the middle east and I thought he was gonna bite the girl’s head off!” Moira groaned into her drink.  
“C’mon, jump on the trash fiction bandwagon,” Varric encouraged. “I’ll put in a good word for you with my publisher.” Moira shook her head.

“I’d be crap at writing fiction.”

“See I said the same thing, so did Hawke! You’ll be great at it.”

“Nah. The only writing I’m good at is about dead people and crumbling ruins.”

“Suit yourself!” He shrugged. “You guys doing anything for dinner? If there’s one thing this book was good for it’s picking up tabs.”

“I seem to have the rest of the night free,” quipped Dorian. “Since someone shrieked and scared away my little romance.”

“Only because someone doesn’t know how to use his bedroom!”

“And if someone else would learn how to knock-”

“This is my house”

“Enough you two!” cried Varric, stepping between them. “You,” he pointed to Dorian, “Shoes. And you, get that whipped cream off your nose. We are going out, we are going to get very drunk, and we are not going to worry about thesis advisers or interrupted sex or sudden and unexpected internet fame.”

 

Varric took them to Moira’s favorite sushi place, the one with the sliding screens in between each set of booths. The town outside was bustling with latecomers in vans and jeeps packed full of clothes, sheets, towels, toiletries and weeping parents seeing their babies off for the first time.

Thedas would have been a sleepy town in the rust belt of upstate New York if it wasn’t for the fact that it served three colleges. As such, it was larger than those around it, with more than its fair share of bars, restaurants and even one dance club that had opened up just last winter. Moira, Dorian and Varric attended Skyhold University, the smallest of the three, although until two years ago Varric had been attending Kirkwall College, to the north. He said he transferred of his own volition, but Moira suspected it had more to do with his girlfriend, Anya Hawke, pushing him out of the party lifestyle Kirkwall was known for.

She had good reasons for wanting him to escape it.

The last college was Ferelden University, an Ivy League school in the north, the oldest part of town. But even this school had had more than its share of troubles in recent years.

Moira liked Thedas. It wasn’t Washington D.C., where Arlathan University, her dream college, had been. Arlathan wasn’t anywhere anymore since it had exploded in a blaze of administrator corruption nine years ago. So she had gone to Skyhold instead, and though the history department didn’t have sister schools in London, Greece and Cairo like Arlathan did, she had enjoyed it anyway. She liked Thedas so much that she stayed for grad school, though perhaps that had more to do with her confusion over what to do with a B.A. in History than it did her love of Thedas.

“You know what classes your T.A.ing yet?” Varric asked her just as she popped a piece of dragon roll into her mouth. She nodded, embarrassed, and Varric smirked.

“Western Civ 101 and 102 with Wynne on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she said once she had chewed and swallowed. “Both three hour classes in the mornings.”

“Oh good, I was worried you were going to ruin our Thursday night poker game with an early Friday morning.” Moira grinned.

“You know I’d never do that to you.”

“I really think this is your year, you know.”

“Oh please, between you, Hawke and Jo I’m lucky to not owe someone my firstborn.” Varric chuckled.

“What about you? You in on Thursdays?”

Dorian shook his head, “Nope. I work for The Emporium and the Herald’s Rest now,” he replied, naming the night club and one of the better bars. “Between bartending and school I might have enough time to sleep. Not every night. And I won’t even think of eating until Christmas.”

“You serious, sparkler?” Varric turned toward him, incredulous.

“Gotta do what you gotta do when Daddy cuts you off!” said Dorian, cheerfully. “My new loans won’t suddenly pay themselves. And not all of us are masters of the pen.”

Moira tensed. She knew the story. Two semesters ago, Dorian had decided to come out to his family. His father had… not taken it well. To say the least. Dorian claimed that had he decided to tell them earlier he would still be in therapy from some bullshit “pray away the gay camp.” She didn’t know how much Varric had been told, but Varric had always been pretty good at guessing what people were thinking or feeling. It was why he was a decent writer, no matter what he claimed to the contrary.

“Shit, I’m sorry man,” Varric said, with a real tone of regret. “I didn’t mean it.” Dorian shrugged.

“Don’t worry about it. I get lots of free drinks from lots of pretty boys and girls and lots of tips from everyone. It works out pretty well.”

“You working tonight?”

“My last free evening of the week!” he said, with dramatic flair. “I plan on making it a good one.” He wagged his eyebrows suggestively.

 

By the time they reached the fifth bar, (or was it the fourth?) Moira had forgotten Professor Fen’Harel, forgotten the Head of the History Department, and forgotten that her subject had been thrown over and she had to go with her second choice. Instead she concentrated on balancing a nickel on its side.

“Careful…” Sera whispered from the other side of the high top table. She had run into them at the third bar, sprinting up to Dorian from behind and throwing her arms around his neck, demanding he give her a piggy back ride. Now she stood with Moira, handing her coins and keeping people from bumping into them.“No talking, yeah? Don’t want to ruin it.” Moira carefully placed a seventh nickel on the table, face so close to the scratched and scrubbed wood that her nose touched the surface. Sera’s eyes widened in anticipation.

“What are you two doing?” demanded Cassie, slamming three beers on the table, destroying their forest of standing coins and sending them clattering down to the floor.

“No!” wailed Sera. “It was going to be a record!”

“What record? The drinking record?” asked Hawke, coming up behind them and setting an additional three beers next to Cassie’s.

“Heh, not versus you,” said Sera. “‘M not stupid.” Hawke grinned sheepishly.

“Cassie, you ready for this?”

“I don’t- I’m not sure this is dignified,” Cassie sputtered, suddenly having second thoughts about the wager Hawke had issued her at the bar. Cassie was tall and strong, with cheekbones that could cut a man that got too close and short, dark hair.

“Do you want to be dignified or do you want to try and beat the champion?” replied Hawke.  
Moira watched as Cassie’s two dominating traits, the desire to do right and the desire to rise to a challenge, warred within her. But it was late and drinks were flowing freely and her competitive nature won out in the end. Hawke saw the change on Cassie’s face at the same time Moira did.

“Good. Okay, line them up.”

Sera and Moira stepped aside as Hawke and Cassie lined up their pints in a row on the worn table.

“Bro, this chick’s about to challenge the champion!” said someone from near the bar, and a small crowd began to gather around almost reverently. Hawke pretended to ignore them.  
Hawke was a bit of a legend in Thedas. Since she came to Kirkwall College five years ago she had yet to lose a single drinking competition. Beer pong, flip cup, straight chugging, didn’t matter. It was eerie. Dorian called her a witch. Sera called her hot.

“Twenty bucks on the champion!” cried Varric.

“Only twenty?” asked Hawke, looking down at him. Hawke was very tall and Varric barely came up to her shoulder. “Losing faith in me, babe?”

“‘Course not, I’m just trying to make it fair for the rest of the takers,” he replied. But there were no more takers, not even among the freshman who had snuck into the bar with fake IDs. Students in Thedas had learned not to bet against Hawke. Cassie grumbled.

“Let’s get this over with.”

To her credit, Cassie almost gave Hawke a run for her money. When Hawke slammed her last glass down Cassie was halfway done with hers. Hawke nodded her head in admiration.

“Agh you are a demon!” breathed Cassie, in between trying to calm her stomach. “I wasn’t even close!”

“Aw, don’t be so hard on yourself! You got closer than most people do!” Moira turned away, smiling, as Cassie continued to argue with Hawke that there must be some trick to it, that no one could drink that fast and not immediately throw up afterward. She looked for her other friends, but Sera had vanished into the crowd and she hadn’t seen Dorian since… The Hanged Man? She remembered something through the haze of inebriation about going to meet the guy from the afternoon to ‘finish what you interrupted,’ so Moira determined that where ever he was, he was enjoying himself. Varric was standing by Hawke, staring up at his girlfriend like he was always staring at her when he thought no one was paying attention to him: like he was the priest of a religion devoted entirely to her. For the moment, everyone was engaged.

Moira thought about fighting her way to the bar to get herself another round, but suddenly there was too much yelling in the room, and the push of people was making her feel hot, or maybe it was the drinks. She maneuvered toward the door, picking her way around students and locals, until she reached the sidewalk and the muffled quiet and the warm air.

There were several people out here too, huddled around the small metal tables The Circle always put out when the weather was nice. Maybe a quick walk up and down the block would clear her head, dispel a little bit of the fog. She had taken a few tentative steps toward the road when someone slammed into her from behind, toppling her over and onto the concrete.

“Oh man I’m so sorry!” the assailant mumbled as he tried to help her up. “Didn’t see you, man you’re tiny, anyone ever tell you? Heh…”  
Moira grabbed the hand he had extended but as she tried to pull herself up the man, not properly balanced to begin with, toppled over on the ground next to her, sputtering apologies through his laughter.  
Any other night she would have been mortified - she hated it when frat guys hung all over her when she went out - but whether it was her good mood or the drinks or the warm night she somehow found the entire episode hilarious. She giggled as she struggled to her feet and muttered some words of forgiveness. But her chuckling abruptly ceased when she twirled around to face the road, still intending to begin her walk, and met a pair of ice blue eyes in an impassive face. Moira blinked twice, then felt the color rushing into her cheeks.

It was Professor Fen’Harel.

He was staring back at her, lips slightly parted as if about to speak. Moira certainly did not notice how the lights from The Circle lit up his face like firelight. Her mind made a desperate bid to come up with a witty quip or casual one-liner to salvage the situation. But she wasn’t Dorian or Hawke, and the brave rally failed.

“H-hey there, professor,” she stammered. “Just, uh, taking an evening stroll?” He shook his head.

“Good evening, Miss Lavellan,” he replied evenly. “On my way home from my office, actually.” He halfheartedly held up his briefcase as evidence.

“Oh, right, of course.” She stood silent for a moment, rubbed a particularly interesting rock in the concrete with the toe of her shoe. If she were very, very still, perhaps the ground would take pity on her. It would open beneath her and allow her to sink into the cool earth, away from The Circle, away from Fen’Harel and away from this horrifyingly awkward situation.

“Enjoying yourself?” he asked. Moira couldn’t discern the tone. Was he being conversational? Judgemental? Probably super judgmental.

“Uh… yeah! It’s been a really… you know, it’s been a nice night,” she finished lamely.

“I certainly hope you are well enough for our meeting tomorrow morning,” he continued. Ugh. He was smirking. She was right! He was being totally judgy of her good time.

“Yeah!” she replied, her prickled pride giving her fresh courage. “I’ll be there, of course! No worries.” Her lip quirked nervously. His expression remained unreadable.

“Excellent. I shall see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Eight AM.”

“R-right.” She watched the blinking sign for The Hanged Man over his shoulder, trying to think of anything else to say, unsure of how to navigate these waters.

“Hey are you okay?!” The man who sent her to the ground grabbed her shoulder and spun her to face him. “I’m really sorry!”

“No, no it’s okay, really,” said Moira, quickly turning back to apologize to Fen’Harel for the interruption. But he was already heading down the street, the neon lights from the bars reflecting off the back of his head.

Moira groaned.

“Sorry man, sorry, did I embarrass you in front of your friend?”

“He’s not my friend,” quipped Moira. “He’s - oh god - he’s my thesis advisor and if he didn’t hate me before he thinks I’m some kind of crazy drunk or something now!”

“Aw no, it’s going to be okay! Come on back in the bar, I owe you a drink, okay? Name’s Krem. I’m really sorry.”

 

Krem finally understood that Moira forgave him after the third or fourth tequila he bought her, and then Moira was free to spend the rest of the evening with her head on the table, surrounded by her friends, mourning her future.

“You should have seen his face!” she told the booth for the second time. “He thinks I’m a lush! I’m like a-a-a fuckup or something. Irresponsible! There’s going to be so much red!”

“Get her home Cassie, she keeps mumblin’ ‘bout red ink and blue eyes and her stupid thesis,” Sera moaned. Cassie turned to look at Moira, her head ticked to the side. Moira was tracing the initials someone had carved into the table with her pinky finger.

“I think that might be for the best,” Cassie agreed.

“Nope,” mumbled Moira as she started tracing the heart around the two sets of initials. “Going to live here. Going to live here in this bar. Girl could build a life for herself in this bar.”

“You are being ridiculous,” said Cassie, getting up and pulling at Moira’s arms to slide her out of the booth. “I would rather not carry you all the way home. Stand up.” Cassie could probably carry her home if she wanted to. She was captain of the track and field team, and could hurl a shot put in a manner that suggested she often imagined it was being thrown at someone’s head.

“Go sleep!” said Sera. “Dreams full of red ink and blue eyes, yeah?” She smirked. Cassie had gotten her to her feet and was pushing a glass of water into her hand.

“Have a good night boss!” called Varric, snuggled up with Hawke in the corner of the booth.

“Bye boss!” waved another man Moira was positive she had never seen before, but had apparently been sitting next to for half the night, across the table from Krem. She waved back at him, mournfully. The man laughed. “It’ll be better in the morning, boss!”

Moira finished her water and Cassie bundled up the back of her light green shirt into her fist, guiding her through the room.

Then she marched her home and dumped Moira into her bed.

“Gotta set my alarm,” Moira murmured into her pillow. “Gotta see him at eight. Gotta face the music.”

“There is no music to face,” said Cassie brusquely as she set the alarm on Moira’s phone. “You are an intelligent woman with good ideas. You will go down to this professor tomorrow, you will tell him that you are serious, he will help you with your thesis and you will graduate. That is the end of it.” Moira nodded, doubtful, but Cassie was the kind of person one agreed with simply on principle.

“Good. I’m leaving some water and aspirin on your nightstand. Call me tomorrow morning and let me know you’re not dead.”

Cassie left the room, turning off the light as she went. Moira strained her ears to hear her footfalls through the hall, the living room, the carpet in the foyer, until she heard the front door close and the house went silent.  
“Serious,” she whispered into the darkness of her room. “I can do serious.”

 

“You cannot be serious.” Professor Fen’Harel shook his head in disbelief and gazed imperiously at her from the other side of his desk. “Why not just copy The Woman Who Would be King word for word?”

Moira rubbed her right temple and shifted warily in the uncomfortable, unsightly green chair. Her eyes felt like they were going to pound out of her skull and every word from Fen’Harel’s lips slid like shards of glass across her brain. No amount of coffee in the world could fix this. She was never drinking again. Nope. Not ever. Plus, this office was hideous. Who thought that stomach acid yellow and mint green was a good combination? Voices drifted in through the door he had insisted she keep open, waking her from her revere.

“Professor, I’m not suggesting that.” Her voice had a clip she hadn’t intended. The Woman Who Would be King was an excellent read, but ultimately too speculative for Moira’s tastes. “I’m not making up theories on Hatshepsut’s day to day life. I’m approaching the whole thesis from the question of why all the female kings of Egypt were erased. I’m not satisfied with the theories right now and I think more questions need to be asked about how capable Thutmose III even was, and then there’s the whole Smenkhkare versus Neferneferuaten issue...”

“And where is your evidence for this? How can you write this paper without it being full of conjecture? Can you even read ancient Egyptian?”

“There’s plenty evidence out there,” she mumbled, trying to keep noise vibrations down to a minimum. “It just depends on the interpretation.” She processed the rest of his question for a moment. “And I can read enough of it!” She pulled her sleeve down past her wrist, hiding her tattoos. They were not an issue she wanted to deal with this early.

Fen’Harel exhaled and placed the tips of his fingers together on top of the desk. Moira watched the nails turn white as the pads pressed into each other.  
“Very well. If you truly believe this is a viable topic then who am I to deny you? We can begin at once. Of course I’ll need your outline and the historiography on my desk by our meeting next week.” A few seconds of silence followed this proclamation.

“I’m sorry?” Moira blinked furiously and leaned forward. Next week?

“Do you need an explanation of what historiography is, Miss Lavellan?” There was a strange lilt to his voice that she couldn’t recognize.

“Of course not, but-” Suddenly she took in the brightness of his eyes, the slight curl of his lip.

“Are… are you joking?” she asked, skeptical. Fen’Harel raised his eyebrows.

“Whatever would make you say such a thing?” he asked, innocently, but his cover was blown now, and Moira relaxed as best she could back into the chair and smiled.

“Professor, you nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“I apologize. You seem out of sorts this morning. I merely wished to alleviate any nervousness you might feel.”

“You know why I’m out of sorts,” Moira replied. “And I’m so sorry you had to see that, believe me that’s not me usually-” Fen’Harel waved a hand.

“I too, was once a student, mourning the beginning of a new semester.” Moira tried to imagine him drinking with friends at a pub, stumbling home. She could not. “There is nothing to apologize for. And while your topic may lack some… originality, or evidence, I am eager to see where you take it.” Moira was unsure how to reply to such a backhanded… insult? Compliment?

“Okay,” she said simply. It seemed the safest option. Fen’Harel nodded.

“It will be enjoyable to come back to Ancient Egypt with a student. It seems the last few years all anyone wants to write about is Alexander the Great’s love life or the origins of Stonehenge.” Moira chuckled.

“It’s all the listicles on the internet.”

“Listicles?”

“You know, all those ‘Five Figures from History You Didn’t Know Were Actually Horses’ or whatever. Everybody wants those sweet, sweet internet points.”

“Oh yes, those McHistories. I have a colleague who emails them to me every once in awhile. I believe she thinks I find them amusing.”

“I’m just grateful that there’s something that can get people interested in history you know? I’m Dr. Wynne’s T.A. for her 100s courses and the things some of those kids come up with-”

“‘Professor, what do you mean Columbus was a lunatic?’” Fen’Harel mimicked, even adopting the wide eyed look of a freshman who had never read beyond her fourth grade textbook.

“Oh god that’s perfect!” Moira exclaimed. She was at ease now, her headache mostly behind her. This was going to be alright! She could work with his biting criticisms and odd manner. Perhaps there wouldn’t even be that much red pen marring all her drafts. But even as she smiled at him, his countenance changed, and all casual air suddenly vanished.

“If there is nothing else, Miss Lavellan,” the blade of his voice swiftly sliced into her thoughts. “I trust that you can see you way out. I will see you again at the same time next week to discuss your progress.”

“Uh, yeah, no, sure,” said Moira, feeling as if the rug had been yanked out from under her. “Okay. I’ll see you then. Have a good week.” Moira stood up, smoothed out the blue sundress she wore, picked up her purse and turned to leave.  
When she chanced a glance back, Professor Fen’Harel had his head face down on his desk, groaning, she assumed, at the unfortunate luck of being saddled with Moira Lavellan and her ridiculous thesis.

 

“So one minute he’s joking and acting like, you know, a person, and the next he’s shoving me out of his office like I have the plague!” Moira huffed. It was a clear and breezy Wednesday afternoon, and she sat with Varric, Hawke and Dorian in the Red Jenny Cafe. Sera, who worked as a cook and a waitress there a few days a week, had vanished into the back some time ago, and the crashes they periodically heard indicated that lunch would soon be arriving.

“That’s nice, dear,” said Dorian, seated next to her on the dilapidated sofa. All of the furniture in the cafe looked like it was taken off the side of the road on garbage day and none of it matched. And except for the cross stitched pillows with vulgar sayings on them that someone kept leaving in every corner of the dining area, nothing could have cost more than a few dollars even when it was new.

“Are you even listening?” she replied.

“Blue eyes, slender fingers, you get all red in the face when you mention him, do you think he’ll try and ask you to the prom?” Moira made a face and hucked one of the cross stitched pillows under her elbow at him.

“Ass.” She muttered. Dorian glanced at the pillow she had thrown.

“‘I’d rather be fucking?’” he read off the pillow, dubiously. “Honestly Moira, could your subconcious be any more obvious?”

“Stop it. I do NOT want to sleep with my thesis advisor.”

“No,” said Hawke, seated in one of the molting wing backed armchairs across the coffee table. “I’m going to go with Dorian on this one.” She stirred her fifth sugar into dark coffee. “I’ve heard you tell this story like, four times already and I barely see you. Next time you have one of your little one on one sessions with him just throw him down onto his desk, have your wicked way with him and get it out of your system. Show him that huge map tattoo on your back. He’s a historian, he’ll love that. Maybe he’ll use his tongue to show how much he’ll love it.”

“A little too subtle, don’t you think?” retorted Moira, sarcastically.

“Always happy to help.”

“You can give us the play-by-play afterwards,” said Varric. “Could really use some material for the next book.”

“No way!” she cried, horrified, and blushing furiously. It was bad enough her lack of a sex life was public knowledge to her friends, but for them to cook up this absurd fantasy with her and Fen’Harel…

“Oh my god talk about something else!” said Sera, approaching with a tray of food. She flung the plates onto the coffee table, heedless of who had ordered what. “Stupid thesis? Boring. Crush on professor? Boring. Watching a bunch of big ugly boys slam into each other this afternoon? Fun!” Moira’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. She could usually keep up with Sera.

“What is she talking about?” asked Moira.

“You really don’t remember?” said Varric. “You were the one who made us all promise Krem and Bull we’d go watch the Chargers play the Fereldan Wardens today.”

“Who the hell is Bull?” Moira asked.

“Huge guy? Broad shoulders? Captain of the Skyhold Rugby team? Met him and Krem at The Circle last week?”

Moira wracked her brain until the murky image of the guy who had waved goodnight to her drifted to the forefront.

“That’s who that guy was?”

“Crazy wasted that night, you!” said Sera, shaking her head.

“Well, we did make a promise to these gentlemen,” interjected Dorian. “It would be rude not to attend.”

“You weren’t even there!” groaned Moira. She was supposed to rereading and taking detailed notes on three articles waiting for her on her desk back home. Maybe she could bring one of them along?

“I was there in spirit!” Dorian declared.

“Don’t be boring again,” groaned Sera. “Shift ends at 2, game starts at 3, it all works out!” Hour and a half. That gave her more than enough time to go home and at least begin annotating something. Moira wanted to get the articles finished up before she started on the books, and she needed something more than the four she had done over the weekend to show her advisor before their meeting tomorrow. Maybe she could even bring one or two of them to the game, get them done while pretending to watch a game she couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“Alright,” Moria said, smiling. “You got me, I’m in.”

 

After the third time she was jostled by the people around her jumping up and down and screaming for the Chargers, Moira began to second guess herself. The bleachers were almost filled with fans from Skyhold and Ferelden University, calling for blood on both sides.

“This is great!” Sera yelled in her ear from behind as Chargers scored another… goal? Basket? Point? Whatever. Either way it seemed like the Chargers were winning.

Bull, the biggest guy on the field, seemed to be doing the best, if “the best” was qualified as the player who tackled the most Wardens.

“Yeah, kill ‘em Bull!” screamed Hawke on Moira’s left as he took another Warden down. Bull arose from the ground and saluted sardonically in her direction.

“Give up on the work already,” said Varric, putting a hand atop the papers on Moira’s knee. “The words aren’t going to walk off before tonight.”

There would be time tonight, wouldn’t there? Maybe all of this could wait?

Grumbling at her own weakness, she folded the papers into her purse, and then joined the crowd when they jumped up and down the next time the Chargers scored a point.

 

It wasn’t until later, when Moira was safely enshrined in her cocoon of a bedroom, that she allowed herself to think on what had been said at lunch. Soft yellow lights illuminated the stacks of books that loomed in every corner, their pages well thumbed and marked with underlinings and arguments and praises in the margins. She was spread out on her pale orange bedspread, naked from the waist up. Her fingers traced the collections of words inked into her skin, constellations of lines from novels and poetry. A collection of George Bernard Shaw’s plays lay neglected at her side.

Varric and Dorian weren’t the most reliable sources. They were just teasing, having a harmless joke at her expense. Right? Moira found lots of people attractive, but she always had trouble making that connection that made so many people giggly and bright eyed. Her last relationship ended in the summer before her first year in college, and while there had been a few flings here and there, she always told herself that she was too busy for anything serious.

Then Moira thought about Professor Fen’Harel. She traveled back through her memories to the previous semester, when she had sat in his Origins of Civilization class. She recalled one April afternoon, when the sun was splintering into the room through the trees outside the window. An image of one of Ramses II’s statues hovered on the smartboard at the front of the room, a lonely pile of rock before a crumbling ruin.

Professor Fen’Harel? He stopped describing the intricacies and accomplishments and aftereffects of Ramses II’s unprecedented reign. He softened his tone, lowered his voice.

And he started quoted poetry.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings,” he murmured. “Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” That’s what he had said. Breathed two lines of Shelley and applied fictional prose to historical fact. But it wasn’t this, the marriage of the two things she held most dear, that had made her shiver. It was the way he had said it. The lines was not addressed to the class as a whole. This recitation was a private, gentle moment. Something between himself and the long ago Egypt of the pharaohs.  
It was after that afternoon that she started to notice all the other things she wouldn’t dare mention to Dorian. Fen’Harel’s gestures, the flash of his eyes, the way he spoke - oh the way he spoke. That accent she could never place, the dulcet that brought a smile to her face unbidden whenever it was even a passing thought across her mind.

Then it all came rushing back to the present, and Moira clapped a hand to her mouth in horror and humiliation. It was all true.

“Fuck!” she cried.

“Everything okay in there?” called Dorian from the next room.

“I’m a fucking idiot,” she groaned.

“Finally figured it out, huh?” he replied.


	2. October

Having a crush on one’s teacher was never easy. 

Having a crush on a teacher with moods as mercurial as Fen’Harel’s was practically impossible. Moira never know who to expect when she entered his office on Thursday mornings. Would she meet the soft spoken dreamer who laughed with her about freshman and his colleagues, who pointed out errors in her with without censure? Or would it be the hard eyed grouser who ripped apart her theories and her sources before coldly dismissing her and turning his face away in what could only be frustration with her methods?

It alarmed her that she was intrigued by elements of both. 

Despite her volume of work, despite the truly disastrous first essays from Dr. Wynne’s 101 class, despite even the tight feeling in her chest whenever she entered his office, September still drew to a close, and with it went the last of Moira’s skirts and sundresses. They were mournfully packed away in a box on the top shelf of the closet, replaced by stockings, tweed skirts, blazers and sweaters and button downs: truly the trappings of an absent minded academic. 

“What you need now is a pair of thick rimmed glasses, darling,” said Dorian on a cold morning in the second week of October. They sat at a rickety table in the corner of the crowded Red Jenny cafe. Moira had the essays from Dr. Wynne’s class spread out before her, each one more abstract and hopeless than the last. 

“My face is too small,” she answered, without looking up. Her red pen poised over a particularly offensive passage, trying to parse out a scrim of coherent thought. “I’d look like a bug.” 

“Nonsense! Oversized glasses are very in right now. With the right pair and your hair down and one of your skirts you’d look like everything out of a scholar’s wet dream and he’d be forced to jump you.” 

“Who’s going to jump you?” asked Jo, plopping down on the seat next to Moira. Moira started a bit. She hadn’t even seen her come in. Jo was a Political Science major, like Cassie, and she was one of the most beautiful people Moira had ever seen. All dark hair and olive skin coupled with a dangerous, mischievous glint hiding behind big hazel eyes. 

Dorian’s eyes flicked toward Moira’s in an unasked question, requesting permission before he said anything regarding their conversation. Besides that first week, when he needled her endlessly in private, Dorian had been mercifully silent on the topic of Fen’Harel, mostly. He hadn’t told anyone, not even Varric, or, even worse, Cassie, about the revelation Moira had had about her feelings. Moira couldn’t bear the thought of Cassie treating her situation like the plot of one of the atrocious romance novels Cassie pretended she didn’t have on her person at all times. Cassie would coo and gush about romantic gestures and unresolved romantic tension when all Moira wanted to do was bury the whole thing deep inside until it suffocated under the weight of suppression. 

But for Jo to know, it was probably okay. Jo knew how to keep secrets. Moira nodded at Dorian, and he turned toward Jo eagerly. 

“Our little Moira here has an enormous crush on her thesis advisor,” he told her. “I was suggesting that a minor alteration to her appearance might encourage him to be a bit more… impulsive.” Jo drew her lips together, pondering. Moira’s red pen fell onto the pages, giving up on its futile quest for meaning. 

“Fen’Harel couldn’t impulse his way out of a paper bag,” Moira mumbled, scornfully. 

“It is… pretty interesting to think about,” said Jo, carefully. “But you’d have to be so discreet, if you intend on going through with it.” This drew a chuckle from Moira. Leave it to Jo to discern the practical implications of what was an impossible fantasy. 

“C’mon Jo,” she said. “I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s never going to happen.” Jo tilted her head to the side as Dorian sipped his tea. 

“Is that… I mean… like, when was the last time you liked… anyone?” she asked. Dorian’s eyes got wide. 

“That’s what I’ve been thinking!” he exclaimed. “If the girl sees something she wants, she should go out and get it!” 

“Guys, I’m not some blushing virgin,” Moira retorted.

“No one is saying that,” agreed Jo. “But I’ve known you since sophomore year and I’ve never heard you gush about someone.” 

“I am not gushing!” Moira felt her face getting heated as Dorian and Jo softly laughed. She picked up her pen again and tried to focus on the student with the truly dreadful name of of Emile de Launcet as he meandered through attempted descriptions about the differences between Herodotus and Thucydides. She did not notice when Dorian smacked Jo in the arm and called his attention to something near the cash register, or their silent language of eyebrows and nods. 

“Well, I’ve got to get to class,” said Dorian, quickly. 

“Yes, and I’ve got to be running along too,” followed Jo. “Have a nice morning!” Moira looked up and raised a hand in a truncated goodbye, shrugging at their sudden exit. She returned to Emile’s essay for a few minutes until a shadow fell across the page. 

“Is this seat taken?” 

Moira froze for a moment. She knew that voice. She looked up to meet Professor Fen’Harel’s inquiring eyes and suddenly the abrupt departure of her friends made complete sense. But she must have been waiting too long to reply because he made a slight movement as if to turn away. 

“No!” Moira called, far too loudly. She cringed. “No, I mean, it’s okay. No one is sitting here.” Smirking, he placed his mug of coffee on the table and sat in the chair Dorian had been occupying until recently. 

“Essays from Dr. Wynne’s class?” he asked, indicating the ocean of white pages that littered the surface. 

“If you can call them that,” Moira replied with a huff. “I want to be mad at them, but how can I? It’s not their fault no one ever taught them what a transition was, or how to write a paragraph.” 

“Shouldn’t there be some responsibility on the individual for their own education?” Fen’Harel continued. There was no smugness in his tone, or in his face when she glanced up. It seemed he honestly wished to know her opinion. 

“I think everyone should want to learn something,” she said, thoughtfully. “But learning how to write academically... that’s not really something a kid can learn on their own. Someone passed these kids. A teacher looked at an essay possibly worse than this one and went ‘yup! go ahead and graduate!’” 

“But what about the pressures upon the teacher? Calls from angry parents or frustrated administrators who know nothing of how to teach? Couldn’t the fault lie with them as well?” Moira grinned. A smile was playing about the corners of his mouth. 

“I’m sure you’d know about that better than I would, professor,” she answered. 

“Please, Miss Lavellan, I believe we have become acquainted enough that you need not address me by my title.” He was looking at a point somewhere above and to the left of her. Moira’s heart did a flip before reason stamped it down. 

“So… what should I call you?” she asked. He blinked. 

“Solas. My given name is Solas,” he said, eyes darting back to her face. 

“Okay! And I guess you should probably drop the whole ‘Miss Lavellan thing and just call me Moira, right?” He inclined his head. 

“As you wish. And to get back to your original question, I’m used to ignorant administrators, but it wasn’t until recently that parents decided that their fully grown children could not handle speaking with a college professor on their own.” As one of the students who had threatened to cut contact with her family should they ever try and speak to one of her professors again, Moira all too well understood the frustration. 

“That hurts the student more than it helps,” she said. “The student doesn’t learn how to fight their own battles, and the professor believes that the student is incompetent.” 

“Exactly,” Solas agreed. He picked his briefcase up off the floor and placed it on the chair beside him. 

“Your productivity has inspired me,” he said. “Although I am not looking forward to seeing what my students have to say on the subject of ancient Chinese philosophy.” He produced a ream of essays and set them on the table. 

“Did you read anything from the Tao to them?” Moira inquired. She corrected Emile’s grammar. “I would think students would like that. Might ” 

“Some do. It’s a bit too vague for others. I keep it out of the 100 level courses. Too many kids who aren’t serious about it.” He looked so perturbed by the thought of sharing the Tao with unappreciative masses that it made Moira smile. 

“You don’t like to share!” she realized, worrying too late that such a comment might close him off again, take away the dreamer and bring her the accuser. But he just smiled softly, took out a red pen of his own and began tending to his essays. 

They sat in companionable silence as the world of the coffee shop hummed around them: the hiss of steam from the espresso machine, the merry  _ ching _ of the cash register, the occasional string of curses from behind the swinging kitchen door that let the patrons know that Sera had burned herself once again. It was easy - peaceful to reduce the space between them down to the scratch of his pen and the occasional sip from his mug. 

“I didn’t think you’d be into coffee,” she murmured after a while, long enough for the morning rush to die down. “You seem like kind of a tea guy.” Solas made a face. 

“God no, never touch the stuff. Boiled leaf water. Even this summer in Egypt they kept offering me this minty sweet stuff - Koshary they called it. I drank it to be polite, but it was dreadful.” 

“Why were you in Egypt this summer?” 

“An old colleague invited me along on a dig outside of Cairo. The country is not really as safe as it once was, but I could never resist the pull of the old places.” 

“Find any mysteries? Some curses?” Solas smirked and shook his head. 

“I fear the world may be rapidly running out of mysteries. I doubt there is another untouched tomb waiting for the right archeologist to stumble across it. But imagine it. Standing there - in a room not touched for thousands of years, seeing the glint of the gold, the dark marks of the writing on the walls.” He exhaled, reverently. 

Moira felt a great fluttering in her chest as he described the scene, the thrum of a butterfly’s wing against the walls of her heart. She tapped her leg up and down, then stopped when it started to shake the table. How obvious about the effect of his words on her could she possibly be? 

Surely he couldn’t be ignorant of her feelings. He must know! But his face, frowning in displeasure at something in the essay he examined, betrayed no knowledge of her emotions. 

Or perhaps he did know. What if he had guessed all along and sat beside her today to show that he saw her as - not a friend, surely - but an associate, something between a student and a colleague? Nothing more. The room suddenly felt very hot, and she buried her face into the wide mouth of her mug of earl grey. 

When she brought the cup back to rest on the table she found him examining her wrist. No, not her wrist. He was looking at the ring of hieroglyphics that circled it. 

“Your tattoos are… unique,” he said in a flat tone. Moira felt herself deflate, the warmth building inside her quenched with a wave of defensiveness. 

“Is there something wrong with them?” she asked, warily. Even the barest trace of flirtation was gone from her voice. 

“No,” he said, hesitating, sensing the tension that his words had sprung up between them. But there was a problem, clearly. 

Moira loved her tattoos. She loved the replication of a map of the world from the 1500s that spanned her shoulder blades. She loves the words of poets and authors that ghosted up and down her rib cage and most of all, she loved the bracelet of hieroglyphics that twirled about her wrist, the one he had taken the most exception to. 

“It’s just…” he began. Here it came. “It’s a bit like having kanji all over you, when you can’t speak or read Japanese isn’t it? What are those supposed to say, live, laugh, love? Some bland quip about inner strength? ‘Just breathe?’” That was it. This was what she had been bracing for. 

“No, they don’t say that.” Moira retorted, hotly. Was she getting too upset? Maybe. Whatever. She had heard this same nonsense enough times to know she wanted nothing more to do with it. She scrambled to shove everything into her messenger bag at once. “It’s the cartouche of Neferneferuaten.” Solas blinked, not expecting her tattoos to honor an ancient female pharaoh.  

“But… what? The Egyptians forgot her - we don’t even know who she was, what her real name was,” he reminded her. As if she needed reminding. 

“That’s kind of the point,” she spat, rising from the table. 

“Moira I didn’t mean-” 

“I know what you meant,” she replied over her shoulder. She wove through the tables and out onto the street. She didn’t look behind her. 

She was so used to the arguments from her family that it she didn’t know why it still bothered her. You’ll regret those in twenty years. Bet you don’t even know what those say. A map, Moira, really? Stupid arguments repeated over and over again ad nauseum until they didn’t even seem like words. Forget her desire for him to trace the lines on her back with his long, fine fingers. Solas was the same as them.  

He was older than her, maybe by twenty years. Why would she think he saw her as anything special? All he saw when he looked at her was someone picking through history for a few choice pieces, a child in quest of shiny baubles to brag about to her friends. 

  
  


_ I apologize if our conversation on Monday offended you. I also regret to inform you that I will not be able to meet with you tomorrow morning. I apologize for any inconvenience. Please call the number below if you have any questions.  _

_ -Solas Fen’Harel _  
  


The email glared at her from the face of her phone. He had used his full name, but what that indicated Moira wouldn’t even attempt to guess. He was putting distance between them, plain and simple. 

Varric, who knew more about her tattoos than even Dorian, was sympathetic. 

“Eh just forget about him,” Varric said when he saw the expression on her face as she read the email, the day after after her disastrous encounter at the cafe. “You were right the whole time. He  _ is _ an asshole. Don’t let it get to you.” They were sitting together at a table in the upper rotunda of Skyhold’s library. Moira was finishing some textbook work for one of her classes and Varric was typing furiously on his scratched Macbook. 

“How’s the new book coming along,” Moira redirected. She didn’t want to think about Solas or her tattoos or how embarrassed and angry she had been about the whole thing. Varric shrugged. 

“It’s alright. Trying to get it done by Christmas, give the fans a present you know?” The work for his accounting class lay unattended at his elbow. 

“Taking a homework break?” she said, pointing to the blank worksheets. Varric didn’t meet her eyes. 

“More than a break, less than a sabbatical?” he said, unevenly. “I just don’t even want to look at it.” Moira turned back to her textbook, tried to concentrate on the movements of the Moghul Empire before she made her next move. 

Varric came from a wealthy family. Fortune 500 wealthy. His parents had always dreamed of him going to Yale or Harvard to continue the business that had been in their family for generations. But no one had ever been any good at getting Varric to do what they wanted, and he had chosen to go to Kirkwall instead. He spent three years of his undergrad drinking, gambling, failing to chose a major, and telling stories instead of doing what was expected of him. His family had been miffed, but not angry. After all, they already had a son to continue in their footsteps: Varric’s older brother, Bartrand. 

Bartrand was the golden child. Where Varric was indecisive Bartrand was resolute. Where Varric would chose the moral ground even if it would come at personal cost, Bartrand would chose the profitable path. He was devoted to tradition, seemingly eager to follow in his father’s footsteps. Varric was never jealous of his brother because his brother’s choices left Varric free to do whatever he wanted. Bartrand was always there, absorbing all the toxic rays of light emanating off his father. 

But then Bartrand died of a heroin overdose in his bedroom closet, and Varric wouldn’t be free of anything ever again. 

Varric spent a semester away from school, drowning under the weight of his grief and new responsibilities before Hawke flipped out, and now the legend in their group of friends told that a seven hour drive and a set of ruined mansion gates later, Varric had returned to school, transferred out of Kirkwall and declared himself a business major. That Hawke and Varric quietly started dating soon after was never mentioned, because as far as their friends had been concerned, those two had been dating since Hawke’s freshman year, they just didn’t know it yet. 

In any case, here he was at Skyhold, working on his books instead of his accounting. 

“Varric,” asked Moira, weighing her words. “Is - are you even interested in this stuff?” She picked up one of the papers between her thumb and forefinger, as if the questions on the page would spring to life and bite her. He grinned at her, lopsided. 

“His friend asked him, attempting to appear nonchalant and failing miserably.” Moira rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him. But then Varric’s face softened, and he turned from the glow of his computer. “No. I’m not interested in this stuff. This was never supposed to be me. But. You know. Gotta protect the family, right?” 

Moira Lavellan did know about that. Not to the extent that Varric did, never that, but she did know the weight of family pressure, the awkward Thanksgiving silences that grew out of defying customs. 

“But - like, is all that really what you want?” 

“C’mon now you’re starting to sound like Hawke. It’s not like I have to chose one or the other. I can be some stuffed up executive and still have time for this.” He spread his fingers out over the keyboard. Moira simply nodded, and tried to return to medieval India. If Hawke, with all her eerie ways of getting things done, couldn’t get him to admit the truth to himself, there was no way she was going to be able to. 

“Hey, it’s okay,” Varric said with a long exhale. “I promise I’m where I want to be. No worries, okay?” 

Moira wanted so badly to believe him. Instead, she took down the number Solas had written beneath his name and programmed it into her phone. 

  
  


She would have spent both Friday and Saturday night holed up in her room, finishing  _ Histories of Ancient Egypt _ for the second time, listening to Tori Amos and popping candy corns like cocktail peanuts if Sera hadn’t stolen her computer on Saturday afternoon. 

Moira received a text from Sera as she was walking back home with her coffee around 430 pm. 

_ -want computer? funchos at 630.- _

This was a ransom text. Gone was her peaceful, if boring night of being a hermit. She knew Sera wouldn’t return her computer unless she sucked it up and went out for a few hours. She grumbled as she walked in the door, grumbled as she took a shower and grumbled as she shimmied her way into an outfit and fixed her hair and makeup. 

Dorian, who had been in on the whole thing of course, found her yowling over traitorous friends quite amusing. 

“You’ve been home all week,” he said, leaning in the door of the bathroom as she fixed her hair. “Home and locked up in your room and stewing about some guy. That’s not you.” 

“Yeah…” she said, her voice rising, about to mount a protest. 

“Ah - ah - ah, none of that! We both know you need to blow off some steam. You go eat nachos with Sera and whoever else she managed to drag along, you come dancing at The Emporium tonight, you’ll get people to buy you some drinks and you’ll feel better once the hangover wears off tomorrow.” Each of his proclamations was punctuated by a gentle jab of his finger into Moira’s shoulder. 

All things considered, Dorian’s prediction actually sounded like a pretty decent evening. Certainly better than trying to focus on the ancient world while the person she wanted to focus on it with was an ass who wanted nothing to do with her and criticized the choices she made about her body. 

Sera was tearing through her second helping of chips and salsa by the time Moira reached them. Jo, dressed impeccably as always, was looking at Sera in kind of a disgusted awe, although she betrayed abject relief when she saw Moira walk through the door. Cassie had her feet up on the other side of their booth and was typing furiously into her phone, frowning. 

“Anyone else coming?” she asked as Cassie put her feet down and she slid in. 

“Varric says he has a surprise for us, or something,” Cassie mumbled, eyes not leaving her phone. “Going to catch up with us later. Cullen is doing fraternity things, Krem and Bull are already out drinking somewhere. Someone is supposed to text them when we leave.” Moira nodded and started to pick up the menu in front of her before Sera slammed it down. 

“Too late!” she announced. “Food and drinks are coming.” As if on cue, the waitress materialized at their side with what appeared to be a pitcher of sangria and a margarita for each person at the table. 

“No salt for her,” said Sera, moving the offending margarita glass away from Cassie. When the waiter had been thanked and departed, Sera turned to them with a sideways grin. 

“Promotion for me!” she announced, taking an enormous swig of her drink. “Promotion for me, tonight’s on me!.” 

“Promoted?” asked Moira. 

“To manager! Isn’t that weird?” she replied, happily. 

“Yeah!” replied Moira, brightly. “But… what about your classes?” 

“Eh I’ll figure it out,” said Sera, dismissively. 

An alert sounded on Cassie’s phone and after a moment she threw it down in disgust. 

“What’s the matter?” Jo asked her. Cassie shook her head. 

“Just Coach Lucius being completely impossible. Again.” 

“Should just kill him,” said Sera. “I’ll do it. Kill the bastard. No one’ll miss him.” Although Sera made these sort of threats often, Moira often thought they had an edge of real seriousness to them. “But kill him tomorrow yeah? Tonight is party time!” 

 

After filling themselves with enchiladas and complaining about food babies all through their second pitcher of sangria, the women stumbled out of the booth at Funchos and made the half mile journey to The Emporium. The nightclub was barely populated this early in the evening, but Dorian was already being chatted up by two people sitting at the bar, and Varric was waiting for them at one of the tiny tables. 

“About time,” he called in greeting. “How was dinner?” 

“It was fine,” replied Cassie, “once I turned my phone off.” 

“Trouble back home?” he asked. Cassie shook her head. 

“Trouble with the team,” she clarified. “And now I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Varric shrugged. 

“Suit yourself! Ladies, please meet my new friend, Cole.” 

“Hello,” said a voice from somewhere beyond Varric. Moira had to do a double take. Seated behind Varric, practically invisible in the dark corner, was a young man, waving his hand in an awkward greeting. 

“What the hell?” exclaimed Sera, clearly as startled as Moria was. “You a fucking ghost or or something?” Cole blinked at her. 

“It’s nice to meet you,” said Jo, attempting to salvage some sense of goodwill out of Sera’s rudeness. 

“Nice to meet you too,” he replied, politely. Varric slapped him on the back. 

“Found Cole here wandering the quad today looking like he didn’t know which way was up,” he continued. “Told him to come hang out with some weirdos tonight and he didn’t argue. So here he is.” Cole shrugged in agreement. 

“Drinks!” cried Dorian from behind them, carrying a tray of brightly colored cocktails with paper umbrellas. 

Moira grinned and grabbed what she later discovered to be a peach cosmo. It was delicious - Dorian wasn’t a bartender just because of his good looks - and she sat at the table beside Cole and Varric. Bull and Krem wandered in around Moira’s third cosmo, already half drunk and smiling, and demanded that they all remove to the dance floor that no one at the small table had realized had become populated since they entered. 

Moira danced. She wasn’t particularly adept at it, she just sort of moved her body in ways it wanted to go and hoped that everyone was too inebriated to realize she wasn’t quite on the beat. But she loved dancing, loved the anonymity of it, loved dancing with a guy or a girl for a song and then vanishing into the crowd, never to be seen again.

On the dance floor, she could forget and be forgotten.

So she danced. 

  
  


On Monday morning, Moira received an urgent email from Dr. deFer, the head of the history department, asking her to come in at noon for what she called a “discussion.” Each word of the terse message made Moira feel sicker. Fen’Harel must have finally said something, asked her to be shuffled around to someone else. Now she was going to have to listen to Professor Anders babble on about the post apocalyptic hellscape that was scant years away because of the New World Order and the Illuminati or the Denver Airport or whatever else he was into these days. Plus, Anders would do what he did when she was in his Economic Geography class her sophomore year: offer her only praise and not a single critique. Fen’Harel might be a bastard, but at least he was a bastard who judged her work fairly. She walked into Dr. DeFer’s office feeling like a French aristocrat being marched to the guillotine. 

“Dr. Wynne informs me that you have an excellent grasp of her curriculum and materials for her Western Civ class,” Dr. DeFer began once Moira was seated in one of the plush leather chairs before her oak desk. 

“Y-yeah,” she replied, unsure as to what being a T.A. for Dr. Wynne had to do with Professor Fen’Harel and his desire to get rid of her. “I mean, yes, ma’am.” 

“And you have been a T.A. for this class for… three semesters, is that correct?” 

“Yes.” 

“Excellent. Dr. Wynne has recommended that you take over her three hour class on Tuesday mornings for the remainder of the semester. You will begin tomorrow. She has emailed me her curriculum plans for the rest of the year, I will forward them to you, and I assume you have the course syllabus to draw from should you need further enlightenment.” 

“What?” gasped Moira. Her head was spinning with the sheer volume of unasked questions. It was just starting to dawn on her that this discussion has nothing to do with Professor Fen’harel whatsoever. Dr. DeFer’s eyes narrowed. 

“You are an intelligent, presumably observational young woman. I am sure that you have noticed that Dr. Wynne is not, shall we say, in the best of health?” Moira nodded slowly. 

“She will be going into the city for treatments every weekend. While this does not affect her Wednesday or Thursday classes, she has asked for a day to recover before travelling back here. Rather than asking for an adjunct from Ferelden or, god forbid, Kirkwall, I thought it best to chose from among our own. Dr. Wynne has selected you. I am sure you will not disappoint her, or me.” Dr. DeFer held her gaze for a brief moment before turning to her computer. 

Moira knew a dismissal when she heard one. She thanked Dr. DeFer and then stumbled out of the office in a sort of shock. It wasn’t until the walk home that she realized that the head of the history department had never really even given her the freedom to choose if teaching a class was something she could handle, or even wanted. She hadn’t even been given the illusion of autonomy. 

As she passed the quad where some freshman were playing ultimate frisbee in one last desperate bid to grasp the fading summer, she clicked through her texts and pressed the phone symbol next to Dorian’s name. It rang twice. He was probably in class, she had probably interrupted - 

“I’m assuming someone is dead,” his crisp voice said into her ear. 

“What?” 

“People call for two reasons, either someone is dead or someone is about to be. Which is it?” His voice had an odd echo to it. 

“Where are you?” 

“Hallway outside of class, where I always take emergency phone calls.” 

“Ugh, I’m sorry, it’s not that important, go back inside.” 

“Moira.” Uh oh. It was his Serious Dorian voice. “What is the matter?” It all came out in a rush. Dr. Wynne’s illness, Dr. DeFer’s decision, the classes she would start tomorrow. 

“That’s good!” Dorian said brightly once Moira stopped to breathe. “Isn’t it?” 

“Yeah, like, mostly yes? I never took education classes, I have no idea what I’m doing in front of a classroom.” 

“Listen, I’ll be out of here in a half hour. Meet me back at home, okay?” Moira nodded into the phone, then realizing what she was doing, vocalized her assent. 

“Good. I’ll see you then, okay? Bye!” The line clicked and then went dead.

 

Moira grabbed some chinese for them on the way home and was rewarded with an ecstatic moan as soon as Dorian walked in the door fifteen minutes after she did. 

“Is that shrimp with lobster sauce?” he called happily from the foyer. 

They sat at their kitchen table, silently reading through the materials Dr. DeFer had forwarded Moira. 

When the cartons were empty except for a few stray pools of sauce, Dorian set his chopsticks down and turned to her. 

“Charles the II was an idiot king of Spain. Galileo was locked up in a tower like Rapunzel for defying the church. Slaves never built the Pyramids, European ethnocentrism ruined academia for years, while Europe was letting their roads go to pot and shunning science after the fall of Rome, Arabia and China were experiencing golden eras, and one should never trust a white man with a funny hat holding a bible in one hand and a rifle in the other.” Moira gaped at him. 

“And that’s just what I learned from trying to tune you out when you talk history at me. Imagine what I would know if I actually listened.” Dorian grinned. “You love history. You love it so much that I’ve grown to hate it. But don’t think for a second that your students will think you’re stupid or incompetent. You’re going to do fine.” He finished with a flourish of his fingers. Moira couldn’t help but smile. Dorian was right. Everything was going to be just fine.   
  


 

Everything was mostly fine. 

Well, everything was fine for two hours and forty six minutes. 

But then Petrice, a smug, insufferable girl who always argued with Wynne, had the audacity to suggest that Athens was a better environment for women than Sparta, and Moira found herself postulating on the relative freedom of free Spartan women and the slavery of Athenian. Her voice had reached a pitch and she was just about to launch into Queen Gorgo’s quote about how Spartan women were the only women who brought forth true men into the ancient world when the back door of the lecture hall opened and Solas walked in. Her voice faltered, but only for a moment. She saw by his sudden change in expression that he was just as surprised as she. What was he doing here? Had he come in to see her struggle? Moira steeled herself. He would be disappointed. 

She continued to laud the autonomy of Spartan women until the bell on the clock tower struck noon, just as she was getting to women racing their chariots in dresses with slits in the side up to the hip. The students, her students now, picked up their things and began to leave the room. Some were grateful to be gone, others chatted amiably about the lesson. A half dozen or so even stayed to ask her questions, though that had more to do with the test grades she had handed back at the beginning of class than any of the material covered in the lesson. But Solas stood by the back door throughout all of it, watching her. When Nathaniel finally left after she had made her opinions on his abysmal grammar quite clear, Solas slowly descended the stairs towards her. She gathered her papers together and tried not to pay attention.

“Are you trying to frighten me?” she asked when he reached her, half jokingly, in a high voice she didn’t quite recognize. It was the first time she had interacted with him in a week. “I’ll have you know that my courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.” 

“Jane Austen,” he said thoughtfully, recognizing the quote, cocking his head to the side. They stood silent for a moment, one unwilling to reply, the other not knowing what to say. 

“I apologize for interrupting your class,” he began again. “Dr. Wynne usually ends early. I expected her to be teaching today. Imagine my surprise.” 

“Dr. Wynne isn’t teaching this class anymore,” Moira replied. It was a safe a topic as any. “Dr. DeFer gave me the class instead. Dr. Wynne has treatments, you know, in the city.” Solas nodded, understanding. 

“Well, since you are here, there is something I would like to show you. Do you have a moment?” Moira considered. Her first instinct was to turn him down. But he was, apparently, still going to be working with her for the rest of the year, and being petty was no way to mend bridges. 

“Yeah, that’s fine, I have a few minutes before I have to go.” She had the rest of the afternoon. Moira slung her bag across her shoulder, and they cautiously began the short, silent walk to his office. 

He closed the door behind him once they were inside, a gesture that sent prickles down Moira’s spine. At every single one of their prior meetings, he had always asked her to leave the door wide open. She took a seat in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs while he went behind the desk to rummage through one of the bottom drawers.

Moira took the time to look around the office, at the few pieces of art he had hung on the otherwise bare walls. The drawer screeched as Solas slammed it shut, and their eyes met across the expanse of his formica desk. He froze for a moment, then nervously cleared his throat. 

“My comments last week - at the coffee shop - were rude and inappropriate. I thought, maybe, that a gesture of equal impropriety, without the offense, might begin to make amends.” He held out his hand and offered her a package wrapped in brown paper, about the size of a stack of postcards. She raised an eyebrow and took it from him, the tips of her fingers grazing the skin of his palm. She looked at him quizzically before peeling back the paper. 

The wrapping fell away to reveal a simple wooden box. The wood was pale, smooth to the touch, and unvarnished. Beautiful, but unremarkable. However, it was the top of the gift that caused the heat to rise up with her. The lid of the box was carved with hieroglyphics, images that she well recognized. 

They were the same hieroglyphics that wound around her right wrist. 

Moira was speechless for a moment, and traced the outline of the carvings.  _ Neferneferuaten: The Ruler _ , they read. When she looked up, his face was carefully expressionless, waiting for her reaction. Her body tensed, and she was calculating the space between them before she realized she was doing it. She could lean forward, press her body against the desk and -  

Then he coughed and broke the spell. 

“If it’s not - if it’s too -” 

“No!” she said too quickly. “Please - it’s beautiful. And thank you! I don’t…” She fumbled for the correct words to express that she loved the gift, that she would very much like to keep it, but that she had no idea what such a gesture meant or what the proper response. Why was the English language so limited? The words of the authors and the poets mapped the lines of her body beneath her clothes, and she could think of not a single word to describe their dilemma. Solas smiled softly at her. 

“I am… glad. That you like it, I mean. It is the beginning of my apology for my behavior last Tuesday.” 

“I just - thank you,” she breathed. The silence rushed between them, and the air within the office grew thick and heady with potential. The closed door behind her was gently encouraging, promising that nothing that happened within those four simply decorated walls would ever leave it. Solas’ tongue darted out and laved his bottom lip. 

“Well,” he said, and the throatiness of the word sent a thrill through her. “I know you said you only had a few minutes. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your day.” Moira felt her chest tighten. He was giving her a way out, right? If she chose to take it?  Clutching the box to her, she stood on legs that she wished wouldn’t tremble. 

“I guess - I’ll see you Thursday morning then, right?” her voice was quiet, almost a hurried whisper. He stared at her for a long moment before nodding. 

“Okay. Um, thank you again!” Then, before she could stop herself, she turned to flee the too small room like the coward she had declared him to be, with the proof of his humanity and perhaps more, clutched tight in her hand.

The word came to her as she wrenched the door open. The word that could explain what had just happened between them. It wasn’t one that she wore tattooed on her body. It wasn’t even English. Of course it wasn’t English. No english word could possibly define that. 

_ Mamihlapinatapai. _ When two people stare across the table at each other, each wanting the other be the first to offer something mutually desired. Mamihlapinatapai. It sounded like a spell out of Harry Potter. Where had she heard that word? One of her friends? Varric seemed like he’d be into a weird word like that. Or Cassie got it out of one of her books.

She repeated the word under her breath.  _ Mamihlapinatapai. Mamihlapinatapai.  _

  
  


“He gave you  _ what?!” _ Cassie shouted into the phone. Moira jumped. 

“I told you what! I’m asking what I should do about it!” she replied, exasperated. Dorian was in class, she had to talk to someone. In the time her heels had beat a retreat from his office to the doors of the building she had called Varric, Jo and Cassie. Cassie had been the only one to pick up the phone. She, Jo, Hawke and Sera were having lunch together at the sushi place down the block. Moira had given her a brief rundown of the situation, then patiently waited for her to relay the information to the other girls. Of course once that was done she had to wait while they finished squealing and teasing and her patience wore thin. Now she just wanted answers. 

There was a fumbling on the other end of the line, then Hawke’s voice, bright and cheery, started ringing in her ears. 

“What you should do is what I told you to do before. March back in there, pin him to that desk and show him how thankful you are!” 

“You know that’s not me.” 

“Maybe it should be, Isabela says it’s what you should do!” said Hawke, naming one of her friends from Kirkwall. “It’s what she would do if she wasn’t shacking up with that broody guy.” There was another scuffle, and Cassie was back on the line.  

“Well, this is a good thing, right?” she asked. “No teacher has ever bought something like that for  _ just _ a student.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“It means he has a huge thing for you!” shouted Sera in the background. “A crush too, not just an er-” Someone - probably Hawke -  stifled her. The phone changed hands again, then grew quiet. Whoever had the phone now must have walked away from the table.  

“Look,” it was Jo. “You really like this guy, right? You want something more than what Hawke is saying?”

“Yeah,” Moira replied, miserably. 

“And he insulted you last week, then bought you an extremely personalized and probably expensive gift to make amends?” 

“Right.” 

“So while I do not completely agree with the consensus of the brain trust back there, I do agree on one point.” 

“That being?” 

“He wants in to your good graces. What we can conclude beyond that is murky at best. But he  _ is _ your teacher, and I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of code of ethics against what you’re thinking about doing.” Jo sighed. “We’ve never met this guy, we don’t know what he’s really like. I trust you, but this sounds, I don’t know, weird to me. Just be careful, okay? ” 

“No, I get that.” Jo was right. A present could mean any number of things beyond an ‘I’m sorry,’ but there was no guarantee that this one did. A door opened, and the phone crackled. 

“And invite me to your super weird wedding at the food of the pyramids!” Hawke screamed into the phone. Moira chuckled, then hung up. 

No matter how charged the air between them had been this afternoon, Moira had no idea what Solas wanted from her. Best to keep a distance, let him make the next move. He was the one with the job on the line. Then she could chose how to respond.  And if, after today, all casual graces ended between them, that would be fine too. She would be no better or worse off than she had been at the beginning of the whole fiasco. 


	3. November

If Solas became any more professional, Moira was going to stab him in the eye with his own fountain pen.

It had been three weeks since he had gavin her the box and apologized, three weeks of strictly academic advisory meetings at 8 in the morning and a prompt dismissal by 9. The waiting for him to do something, anything, was boiling up the frustration within her. Halloween came and went, and Moira briefly considered Sera’s suggestion of wearing a slutty schoolgirl costume and “accidentally” texting a photo of it to him, but thought better of it.

And here they were again, on another Thursday morning, she taking over both uncomfortable plastic chairs by using one as a footrest, and him leaning against the front of the desk rolling up the sleeves of his blue button-down and having no idea how much he was exacerbating their issues.

She thought that if he returned to business as usual, then that would be her answer, and she could do it too. But it wasn’t normal. She knew that everything wasn’t normal when he held her gaze a moment too long, when he laughed at one of her silly attempts at a joke, when he faded into awkward silences and smiled sideways at her.

And, most telling, how he always closed the door behind her when she walked in.

She knew, she could feel that there was something more going on. Sometimes she thought she could smell the thin veneer of control he painted on that morning. She wanted to make him tear off the mask, send him off kilter, to shred all of his carefully constructed control and leave it in tatters on her bedroom floor.

There he stood, forearms exposed for all the world to see, completely oblivious.

“So while I understand where you’re trying to go with this angle, I wonder if Dodson might be a better source than Smith.” Moira started. He was looking at her expectantly. Smith? What had they been talking about?

“Um, yes,” she replied. “Dodson. Right.” Solas’ lip curled.

“Somehow, I don’t think Ancient Egypt is on your mind this morning,” he said with a smile. Moira panicked for a moment, before his casual manner set her at ease. “Truth be told, I’m not one for it today either.” He braced his arms against the desk and turned to look out the window, at the grey skies and thinning trees. It was a bitterly cold day for November. “Would… would you like to take our conversation outside? Perhaps some fresh air would clear the cobwebs away.” Was he asking her to go for a walk? On the coldest day of the year to date?

“That-that would actually be really nice,” she replied, carefully. “Wait though, isn’t it supposed to like, snow or something?”

“Maybe,” he agreed. “Although I don’t mind if you don’t.”

“Nah, I love the snow,” she grinned. “Reminds me of being little.” He gave her a small smile and pushed himself off the desk. She reached for her big downy coat but he got to it first, holding it open for her as she slipped into its comfortable warmth. He rested his fingers on her shoulders for the barest of moments.

Moira wrapped her outrageously long, multicolored scarf around herself and pulled on her mittens while he grabbed his own jacket, a marbled grey peacoat. Next to his trim figure she knew she must look ridiculous, like a child bundled up by an overprotective mother. But Moira hated the cold, and would eagerly sacrifice fashion for comfort.

Solas locked the door behind them and they made their way through the building to the frigid air outside, neither saying a word. When they reached the quad and Moira lost the feeling in her nose at the same time she began to lose hope that they would say anything to each other, Solas spoke.

“Your thesis topic is more engaging than I originally anticipated.”

“Thank you?” she responded, more terse than intended. Why was he so good at insulting her? He hadn’t seemed to notice her tone, and continued.

“I had known about the erasure of the female pharaohs, of course, but I never truly questioned why. Why, in a society that valued women more than its contemporaries, that prized it’s own history, why would they erase all traces their rulers who merely happened to be women? Hatshepsut was the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, a women who ruled alongside a child-king for almost twenty years. Why should he deny her, tear down her monuments and turn her statues into scrap?”

“You’ve been reconsidering my seriousness?” she said, remembering their first conversation regarding her topic. He shook his head.

“Reconsidering my own. I even read Cooney again, and even though it’s pure speculation I still found more merit in it than I did the first time. I dismissed your ideas because I had never personally considered them. That is the gravest offense someone like us can make, the assumption that one has thought of everything.”

“Someone like us?”

“Historians,” he added. “Curators of the past.”

“Oh.” He considered her a historian? An equal? The words between them slipped away for a few minutes as they left the campus and headed toward the restaurant district of Thedas.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about your scarf,” he said, offhandedly. “I recognize it.” Moira blanched.

“You… you watch Dr. Who?” she muttered, incredulous. Her scarf was a replica of the one worn by the Fourth Doctor. Her mother had spent months knitting it for her three years ago. She still binge watched the episodes with Varric when they were released on Netflix, but had stopped following the plot with the same fervour she had back then. Lately it had become more of a drinking game than anything else. The idea of Solas sitting down on a Saturday night to watch the adventures of a time travelling alien who travelled in a police box was so far from the realm of possibility that she was sure she had heard him incorrectly. He chuckled.

“No, well, not anymore,” he answered. “It was on all the time when I was a child. I think it might have been more of a struggle to avoid it.”

“Oh! There’s a new series, you know. Like a continuation.” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“I am aware. But I don’t really watch television much these days.”

“Well, what do you do? For fun, I mean.” Solas breathed deeply.

“While school is in session, I read. It’s really all I have the time for. But in between semesters? I travel.”

“Where?”

“Everywhere. Europe. Asia. South America, Africa - when I could. Wherever there were old places to see and explore.”

“By yourself?”

“Sometimes a colleague would invite me to see a recently uncovered tomb, or crumbling ruin, or needed help with some research in an old archive. But yes, most of the time I was alone.”

“It sounds lonely.” He shook his head.

“Not so much. There are seven billion people on this planet you know. Most of them are interesting. I would meet people wherever I went. I was never at a loss for acquaintances.” Moira did not tell him that it still sounded lonely, to be surrounded by people and able to call none of them friend.

“Tell me a story,” she said instead. They were in the heart of the business district now, headed toward the river. Moira thought how strange it was that it was so quiet, so still. The cold must have been working hard at keeping everyone indoors.

“In Ireland, I stood upon the hill of Tara as the sun slipped lower and lower in the sky. I felt the energies of the ancient kings who ruled from that place thrumming up from the earth beneath my feet. For a moment I imagined all the neatly trimmed fields that surrounded me, all the crumbling English castles, had all vanished. Everywhere was covered with a thick forest, and I was the lord of all that I surveyed.”

“That’s beautiful,” Moira breathed.

“It is true,” he replied. He turned to look at her, and his eyes were bright and mischievous, and she felt her heart clench. “Should I also tell you of the time I met a leprechaun while stumbling through the streets of Galway, trying to find my hotel?”

“I want stories of things that actually happened,” she chided, and nudged him with her shoulder in jest. Her nose was so numb that she almost didn’t feel it when the first snowflakes began to shock her skin.

“That did happen,” he insisted. “At least to the best of my recollection.”

Solas stopped walking. They were on the old stone bridge now, which spanned the river running through the heart of Thedas. He turned, placed his hands on the railing, and looked out over the water with the same faraway gaze Moira imagined he had worn on the Hill of Tara so many years ago. The snow swirled around his head, catching on the collar of his coat, melting on the red tips of his ears. He smiled, wistfully at the clouds on the horizon.

And Moira couldn’t take it anymore.

She drew up beside him, placed one hand on his cheek and turned his face toward her. His skin was so warm beneath her fingers, in sheer spite of the cold. She searched his wide, surprised eyes for only an instant before pressing her lips oh-so-gently to his.

Moira registered everything. She knew the feel of his wind bitten lips beneath hers, heard his sharp intake of breath, sensed the way his body tensed and it sent a thrill up her spine, until she also realized one crucial fact.

He was not kissing her back.

She tore her face from his and stepped back, bracing her shaking hands on his shoulders because she didn’t know what else to do with them. Her lips pressed into a line, ready to apologize, to take it all back, offer to put all the things back to the way they were before she had made such an awful misstep, before she had crossed their unspoken boundary and stomped all over their carefully constructed mamihlapinatapai.

“I-” she began.

Then he was on her.

Solas swallowed Moira’s gasp of surprise as his mouth, hot and needy, demanded entrance to her own. His long fingers threaded through her hair, tender, even as his body pressed her back into the stone railing of the bridge. He tasted bittersweet. Coffee without enough sugar. She knew she could never have a cup again without thinking of this moment, how her lips parted and his tongue invaded her mouth, a greedy explorer. She grabbed the lapels on his coat and pulled him down to her, changing the angle, pressing back against him, fighting for control. A groan rumbled up from deep within him and she felt desire coil around her like a snake and settle in her belly. This was real. Solas was pressing kisses along her jawline, making his way to her throat.

“Solas…” she breathed, thready and small.

He jumped back like he had been burned. He was shaking his head, looking everywhere but her eyes

“No,” he mumbled. “This isn’t right. I shouldn’t - We-” He was backing away. Oh no. Fuck that.

Moira grabbed his hand.

“Stop,” she said. He looked at her, and there were so many expressions warring on his face. Guilt, regret, lust. But as soon as she had seen them that mask of control clamped down again, leaving her with nothing but serene eyes and a soft smile.

“You’ll be late for Dr. Wynne,” he said, simply. “We can talk later. After your class.”

She could not muster a reply before he turned away from her, stuffed his hands in his coat pockets and walked off in the direction opposite the school. Moira was left standing on the bridge, holding out her hand to nothing and no one.

 

Moira was late to Wynne’s class. She paid attention to nothing the older woman said. Instead she watched the snow outside slowly taper in its descent, and eventually cease altogether. There was chattering in the back of the room, but Moira was too busy listening to his words replay in her head to offer a sharp, biting glare. Her glares had never been all that biting in any case.

When the three hours had finally dripped by, Moira leapt out of her seat with an enthusiasm to rival any student disinterested in History who was given an early dismissal, but her flight to the door was arrested by the voice of Dr. Wynne.

“Miss Lavellan?” she asked, with one eyebrow raised. “Might I have a word?” Moira struggled in vain to hide her impatience. Solas had no doubt already spent three hours concocting bullshit arguments as to why what had happened on the bridge was an ill conceived blunder and she had to get to him as soon as possible to counteract them.

“We haven’t had much of a chance to talk lately,” Dr. Wynne said. “Just an email here or there. Tell me, how is the teaching going?”

Despite her turmoil, Moira did not hesitate in her reply.

“I love it, she said, startling even herself. “I didn’t expect to - I thought I’d live in research archives my whole life - writing books and articles. But even when one of them asks a question so wrong it makes me want to scream, I still like the explaining. I like the students who want to talk about history, you know?”

Dr. Wynne chuckled softly.

“You were one of them once.” Even though she desperately wished to be gone, Moira smiled ruefully.

“I was your answering machine, you mean.”

“Every teacher needs at least one. Someone to keep the lesson going when everyone else is too hungover or tired. And the sometimes a lesson just doesn’t work, and you’ve just got to get through the hour as best you can, and try again.”

“Yeah,” Moira agreed, smiling about something that had nothing to do with her students. “Sometimes you do.”

 

Solas was gone from his office by the time she finally reached it, off to teach his 12:45 class on Ancient Civilizations. Moira stood at the closed door, nibbled her thumb and wondered what she should do. Cassie would leave, stew about it for a few hours, then come back and all her emotions would pour out of her in a violent burst. Desks might be hit with firm fists. Jo would write a carefully worded text or an email. Hawke would do what Hawke often did, which was to make a complete spectacle of herself by marching into his classroom in the middle of a lesson and do something wildly inappropriate like kissing him right in front of his students. She might even kick a door in for emphasis. None of these courses of action sounded very appealing. She decided instead to do what Moira would do.

_-At Red Jenny. Meet after your class?-_

Moira turned her phone on silent and slipped it into the pocket of her coat. Her secret trick was that if she couldn’t hear or see the phone, the reply would come back all the sooner.

She did not think about the phone in the time it took to walk to the cafe, or while she decided on and ordered a horrifying confection of a drink full of caffeine and sugar, or while Sera burst out of the back and demanded she be allowed to toast her a buttered muffin. And she certainly did not pull it out of her pocket as Sera erupted into a fit of laughter at her own innuendo.

Her patience and secret trick paid off well. By the time she settled down with her drink she had a new text.

**_-Moira?-_ **

_-Shouldn’t be texting when you teach. Student might see you and make you read it to the class-_

**_-I would fail them for their presumption-_ **

_-haha.-_

_-so yeah. Ill be here after your class. If you want-_

She wished she hadn’t added the last part, but it was too late now.

“Ugh stop the worrying, your frowny face is awful,” muttered Sera when she dropped off Moira’s snack. “You’re freaking gorgeous otherwise. If he doesn’t want you I’ll fight him for being so totally stupid.” Having never said a word of why she was anxious, Moira wondered at Sera’s insight. She was about to say as much when her phone lit up with a new text and they both looked at it like they had never seen technology before.

**_-That would be fine. I will see you around 2:30-_ **

“Tell him, murder for stupid,” threatened Sera.

“I thought it was fighting?” replied Moira, still elated.

“Fighting, murder, whichever,” Sera said as she retreated to the back. “I’ll decide when I see him.”

 

Moira filled up the hour by catching up on the article reading she had been neglecting and agonizing over the recent possible discovery of Nefertiti’s tomb. If it truly was the ancient queen lying in a secret room off of Tutankhamen's tomb, then perhaps the mystery of Pharaoh Neferneferuaten would be solved. The age old question, was she Nefertiti or Meritaten, would be answered. The hieroglyphics on her wrist would no longer belong to an enigma, but to a women who had once lived and breathed and ruled a vast and powerful kingdom before she and her entire dynasty was destroyed and erased. She rubbed the tattoos on her wrist, she wondered if she was ready for the truth of it. When the hour was up and she had just begun to consider what she would do if he didn’t show at all, he opened the door and hurriedly sat down next to her, words pouring out of him before she could speak.

“I am sorry about what happened earlier. I was not clearly thinking, it was out of line, it was wrong to consider it.”

Moira blinked at him, stupidly, while another part of her considered how true to her word Sera would be.

“I…” she floundered, before anger boiled up within her. He was the one who gave her presents and asked her to go for walks. He was the one who had kissed her back! Why should all the shame be on her?”

“Well, you did,” she finally replied, hotly. “And you seemed to like it. Who said anything about considering?” His eyes grew wide for a moment, and he passed a hand over his head.

“That… none of that came out right,” he said to the table. “I don’t want you to think that I, that I’m not…” He sighed. “I am the one who had been considering. There are thousands of reasons why this is not a good idea. I am your teacher. There would be questions, lots of them. Skyhold is fairly lax on the matter of fraternization with students provided that it is not flaunted but -”

“Wait, how do you know that?” Moira interrupted. Solas cringed.

“I may have… asked?” he muttered.

“Recently?”

“More recently than I’d like to think about, yes.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes. How long had Solas been looking at her with more affection than a teacher should have for his student? This question only led to more, endless branches of question trees that stretched on in her mind’s eye. Sera glared at the back of Solas’ head from behind the counter, heedless of Moira’s frantic head shaking.

“This could a bad idea,” he finally said. Moira shrugged. Of course it could. It could also be a bad idea to get into a car, wake up in the morning, or eat one of Sera’s scones. That didn’t mean it was something not worth trying. Jo was right. Moira didn’t like things the way she liked him, and to lock her feelings up in a box and ignore them because there might be some uncertainty was, in two words, fucking stupid.

“Maybe it won’t be,” she said, and there was iron in her voice. He looked at her, finally looked at her since their kiss on the bridge, and his eyes frantically searched her face for something. Her heart thrummed somewhere in her upper throat as she watched him.

“I’m not saying no,” he murmured, turning away again, evidently not finding what he had been looking for. He signed, deeply. “Can I think about it?”

“Okay.” Moira felt deflated, like she had run a marathon and then been told it was another ten miles to the finish line.

He grasped her hand. His own was clammy, as if he’d been running too. “Thank you, Moira.” He squeezed her hand and then he was gone. She stretched and bent her fingers, trying to puzzle together just what she was supposed to think, or do.

“You just say the word,” said Sera, with a warm hand on her shoulder. “I’ll fill his bed with frogs. Your call.”

 

“What the hell is Friendsgiving?” Varric asked Cassie incredulously. “And pass the salt.”

Cassie sent the salt flying down to him across the dining hall table. They were all seated at dinner in a cacophonous huddle on a Wednesday evening in Haven Hall, and Moira was remembering why she and Dorian usually cooked dinner at home.

“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Cassie retorted. “Thanksgiving for friends. We can all get together the Sunday before Thanksgiving break and we can all make different dishes or bring wine or beer and -”

“I’m in,” said Bull, quickly.

“What?” asked Dorian, turning to the man next to him. Bull raised an eyebrow.

“Free homemade food? I’ll bring the beer, where do I sign up?” replied Bull.

“Hard to argue what that logic,” added Moira.

“But where are we going to go?” asked Jo. “It sounds fun, but, I mean, my apartment can hold like, three people, tops.”

“Yeah,” said Varric. “The only ones with a place big enough are…” He drifted off, and seven sets of eyes fell upon Moira and Dorain.

“Oh no!” cried Dorian. “No, no, I am not cleaning top to bottom just so you people can have this ridiculous party.”

“You sure?” asked Bull. “I’m sure we could all figure out some way to make it, you know, worth it.” This was said with a dark tone and an exaggerated wiggle of his eyebrows that sent many an eye rolling.

“I have completely changed my mind,” declared Dorian. “My place it is!”

Plans were made and Jo drew up a list of what everyone should be bringing. Sera insisted she would make the best pies ever and then vanished mysteriously from the table. Dorian and Moira agreed that they would be responsible for nothing but the turkey and Varric, rather predictably, announced that he and Hawke would be supplying and and all alcohol. Other dishes were claimed, and the temperature of everyone’s attitude increased several degrees.

Moira had been apprehensive at first, but perhaps this whole Friendsgving thing wouldn’t be such a bad idea. It would certainly do something to get her mind off Professor Fen’Harel and the stagnation they had found themselves in. When he met her at the diner and said he wanted time, she thought he meant a day or so before he could give her a real answer. Two weeks had gone by and they were back to open doors and historical discussions that did not taper off into mouths pressed together and needy moans. She was wound up with too much to think about. A silly little party with her friends would be perfect.

 

On a list of all the people Moira expected to show up at 9 am on a Sunday morning with bags full of groceries and cleaning supplies, Bull lingered down towards the bottom, somewhere between Dr. Wynne and her own mother.

“Morning, boss!” he said merrily, holding up the plastic bags in his huge arms as she opened the door and he walked past her. “Looking good!”

“Bull?” she said blearily. She tugged the long t-shirt she was wearing further down her thighs and wished she had the sense to sleep in shorts. “What are you doing here?”

“I knew you guys would be running around all crazy trying to get the house ready by this afternoon, so I thought I’d come over and lend a hand.”

“It’s nine in the morning. No one is supposed to be here until like four.”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to cook an almost 30lb turkey?”

“Does… does looking it up on the internet count?” Bull grinned.

“I am here to help,” he said. “Now go get that roommate of yours out of bed, put on some shorts and let’s conquer this room.”

“Did someone really just refer to me as ‘that roommate of yours?” asked Dorian, drifting out of his room, shirtless, of course, and scratching the back of his head with one hand. He yawned, and Moira caught Bull’s appreciative stare. She wondered if Dorian did. Bull’s desire to come over at the ass crack of dawn suddenly made a little bit more sense beyond making sure they cooked the turkey correctly.

“I always thought I’d be ‘that shockingly good looking roommate of yours,” he continued.

“You want that, you’re going to have to earn it with a little bit more than bed head and a pair of sweatpants,” replied Bull. Dorian smirked.

“These sweatpants happen to be concealing an amazing ass, if that counts for anything.”

“Eh, it’s getting there. Take a shower or something, I might be able to upgrade you to decent.” Dorian sniffed the air in mock offense and retreated to his room.

“You’ve got a nice ass too boss, but you should probably put some shorts on or something.” Moira turned bright red and fled to her room.

 

By the time she emerged, Dorian had taken control of the bathroom with sounds of sprays and scrubbing and Bull was vacuuming the living room. It was surreal, and she coped by taking apart the nest of books, shoes, articles and pens she had build around her armchair in front of the TV and redistributed the items to their proper locations.

Sera showed up around noon, shoved five boxes of pies into Moira’s arms and a full tray of candied yams, then slumped over to the couch and turned on football, cackling whenever someone got tackled.

“I think that chick who sings at the cafe wants to get into my pants,” she shouted to Moira. Moira was in the kitchen, staring at a pot of boiling potatoes and having no clue what to do with them.

“Oh yeah?” she replied, absently.

“She wrote a song and I’m like, 95% sure it’s about me. It’s kind of creepy but also a little sweet you know?”

“More creepy than sweet,” said Varric, who had just entered, as usual, without knocking. He had brought with him several crates of expensive looking wine, a cheese board from one of the local shops and stormy expression on his face. Without saying much of anything to anyone beyond the usual pleasantries he retreated into Moira’s room to write. It was behavior so unlike Varric that Moira wondered if something was really wrong, but didn’t have time to contemplate it before Hawke walked in.

“You and you,” she said, pointing to Dorian and Bull, “put those muscles to good use and get the beer out of the back of my jeep.”

The beer in the back of Hawke’s jeep turned out to be more than fifteen twelve packs and ten growlers of craft beer from different breweries around the area.

“Where did you get all this,” Moira marvelled as it was piled high on the table out on the back patio.

“Isabela,” Hawke replied breezily. “And don’t ask me where she got them. I absolutely don’t have the slightest idea. Where the hell is Varric?” Moira jabbed a thumb in the direction of her room.

“He barely said a word to me and practically locked himself in my room. Is everything okay today?” Hawke’s blustery smile faltered for a fraction of a second.

“Ah, he must be writing. I’ll see if I can distract him.” She grinned and started down the hall.

“Don’t you two dare have sex on my bed!” Moira called after her. Hawke replied with nothing but one of her outrageous laughs.

“It would suck if they christened it before you,” snorted Sera from the couch. Moira chose to ignore her.

The afternoon wore on, and Moira’s house filled with friends and good smells and laughter. Cassie and Cullen argued cheerfully over something regarding their respective track and field teams, Sera was explaining an entirely nonsensical set of rules about football to Cole, who was nodding along gravely, Dorian and Bull had taken over the kitchen and Moira, with a bottle of beer in one hand and a cheesy cracker in the other, was happy to leave them too it.

Hawke and Varric remained scarce, except for a few times Hawke had emerged from Moira’s room for refills on the beers that were chilling on the patio. On one of these excursions, Hawke had been blocked from the sliding glass doors by the not insignificant figure of Cullen, who had been bringing several bottles back to the living room.

She offered him nothing more than a pursed lip and a curt nod as she stepped past. Cullen wouldn’t look at her at all. They had always been frosty toward each other, and no one had ever told Moira the reason why.

Isabela, Fenris and Merrill tumbled in around five with enormous amounts of bean dip and bad whiskey. Jo arrived with her friend Leliana not long after. Leliana was slightly older than Moira and worked as an adjunct professor of philosophy at Fereldan University. She had come out with the group a few times for drinks, and was known to everyone as cheerful, if sometimes mysterious acquaintance. How she and Jo became friends was anyone’s guess, because each time they were asked, the details always changed.

“How is Ms. Cousland?” sputtered Cassie when she had Leliana alone for a moment. Jo, who was used to Cassie asking Leliana about Sarah Cousland whenever they were in the same room together, sighed dramatically.

“Sarah?” Leliana replied with a smile. “Oh man, I think she’s in D.C. working on a story. You’ll know it’s true when its on the front page of the Times.” Jo laughed, and Moira took a sip of wine.

Sarah Cousland was a household name in Thedas, and a very good friend of Leliana’s. Five years ago, when Sarah had been a little journalism undergrad (and the fencing champion) of Ferelden University, she had uncovered a huge corruption scandal that went all the way to Loghain Mac Tier, at that time the president of Ferelden. She worked quietly but quickly, gathering her sources, double and triple checking her facts, before she unleashed everything she knew.

For Mac Tier, it was a bloodbath. He was disgraced, his sycophants and appointees abandoned him, he was forced to resign, and the shockingly young Alistair Therin had taken his place.

A year after that, and Sarah Cousland would have become Sarah Therin if she hadn’t wanted to keep her last name in her marriage to the young college president, and there had been questions about what had “really” happened ever since. What was a simple story of a journalism student stumbling upon a major scandal and happening to find love along the way had been transformed in all of its subsequent retellings into some sort of epic tale, with a struggle of good and evil set against a backdrop of clandestine machinations. Cassie was desperate to meet her and learn what was true and what was myth. Leliana had been at Sarah’s right hand through the whole debacle, and Cassie fervently hoped that she might meet the legend through this connection.

Hell, Moira wouldn’t mind meeting Sarah Cousland either. But she was always travelling, chasing stories, fighting corruption, and Moira knew she was fated to know Sarah through nothing more intimate than her byline.

The afternoon went on in a vein of chatter and smiles until Dorian and Bull, adorned in patterned aprons, announced to the crowd that dinner was soon to be served, and there was a rush to shove tables together and find seats for everyone and dole out silverware. Varric and Hawke finally emerged from hibernation and took their places next to their friends from Kirkwall.

“Before we start,” began Cassie when everyone had been seated, “We should do this thing I do every year with my family.”

“Cassie,” groaned Varric, who could guess at what she meant, “Please don’t make us do this.”

“Shush,” said Cassie firmly. “This is Friendsgiving. Everyone has to say what they are thankful for.

“I’m grateful for Hawke,” said Varric bluntly, then plowed into his mashed potatoes. Hawke went bright red before regaining her footing.

“I’m grateful for myself too!” she agreed. “Who wouldn’t be? I am pretty fantastic.” She smiled softly, and secretly.

“Free food!” shouted Bull.

“Free drinks!” chimed Krem.

Around the table they went. Cassie was grateful that Coach Lucius was being replaced. Leliana was thankful that Ferelden would continue to remain open. Finally, it came to Moira.

“For friends who take over your house and make you smile,” she said.

Everyone dug in.

 

By ten at night, the carcasses of seven pies, two boxes of Russel Stover chocolates missing their navigation guides, a half empty tray of cookies and a crumbling jello mold lingered on the table alongside paper cups filled with varying amounts of cooling coffee. Sera was snoring on Moira’s bed, Varric and Hawke were curled up together asleep in the big armchair in the living room, Dorian and Bull had vanished, and Jo had taken the rest of them, (except Leliana, who knew better) for all they had at poker. Isabella was impressed, as she had been cheating the entire game and still couldn’t manage to beat her. Merrill and Fenris had lost their money quickly, and seemed to be competing against each other to see who could casually drink the most wine before one of them passed out. Cassie had hung out until the very last, and Cullen was pretending to be furious.

“Why do I even bother playing,” said Cullen, throwing down his cards in disgust. “Every time I play you I lose money. Every time.”

“Oh, remember the time Cullen lost his clothes too?” piped Isabella, who mimicked fanning herself. “Oh mah stars and garters, I believe I caught an attack of the vapors that evening,” she drawled in a fake southern accent. Cullen groaned and covered his face with his hand.

“Yes!” said Jo. “That’s when he was still over at Kirkwall and he had to run back to his dorm -”

“Wrapped in the motto banner from the lobby!”

Jo and Isabella collapsed into a fit of giggles, and Moira took advantage of her chance to bundle a few items from the table into a nearby garbage bag. The night had been excellent, but she dreaded the disaster area the kitchen must have transformed into, if the dining room was this bad. She filled the black garbage bag and wandered into the kitchen survey the damage.

She found Cole there, standing in front of the running dishwasher in the middle of a spotless kitchen, distractedly humming a song to himself. Moira was baffled. The counters were spotless, the dishes had been done and put away, something she never bothered to do. It was like in the stories when faeries come and magic away the mess. Had Cole done all of this?

“Everything okay?” Moira asked when she approached. She didn’t really know Cole all that well, had never shared more than a few words with him despite the fact that Varric dragged the kid out every weekend. “Did you clean the whole kitchen?” Cole turned to look at her, as if he were astonished she was even there.

“Sure,” he said. “I wanted to help. Thank you for dinner.” Moira smiled. “I didn’t make it. My one and only contribution to the evening was letting you guys use my house. Thank you so much for this, I didn’t even want to think about the cleanup.” Cole shrugged.

“Solas has been thinking about things,” he said. It was such a non sequitur that it was a moment before Moira’s heart had processed enough of what he said to even begin to skip a beat.

“What?” she gasped. “How - how did you know?” Cole blinked and indicated her phone on the counter.

“I looked over at it when it buzzed,” he replied. “Then it lit up when I moved it to clean under it. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to read the name.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Just, I wasn’t expecting it, you know?” Cole nodded and drifted into the living room, where the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special had begun to play on the television. Moira sank against the counter and opened the two texts.

_**-I have been thinking about things-**_ read the first text.

_**-I would like to continue seeing you.-**_ Moira considered for a moment before replying. She did not want a repeat of the beginning of the month, where they fell toward something and then he pulled back. Whatever happened, she wanted to have an understanding from the start.

_-Is that in an official capacity? Professor/Student?-_ She received a reply almost immediately.

**_-No.-_ **

She grinned, and whether it was the wine or something else, a warm feeling bloomed in her chest and spread from the tips of her toes to the pads of her fingers, and she was writing back before she knew what she was saying.

_-Good.-_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Historical Stuff that Might Interest You
> 
> -The "Cooney" that Solas refers to is "The Woman Who Would be King," by Kara Cooney. It's interesting to read, and fun, but it's really, really speculative. Give it a try if Ancient Egypt interests you. 
> 
> Other Stuff that Might Interest You  
> -I'm working on a longish, Hawke/Varric one shot from this same universe, because apparently my saltiness over the lack of Varric romance has carried over into this fic.


	4. December

Moira awoke to the feeling of someone gently shaking her and she looked up, blearily.

“Did you honestly sleep out here all night?” asked Dorian, his glib smile doing nothing to hide his very real concern. “I told you to go to bed when I got home at one.”

Moira shifted in the armchair she had spent the night in, and sent her binder crashing to the floor, where papers exploded in every direction. She looked at the gray, early morning light streaming in through the living room windows, the cup of tea in Dorian’s outstretched hand, and the slew of carefully organized papers now spilled all over the carpet.

Then she burst into tears.

This scene happened at least once every semester, and Dorian was well versed in the dance. He gathered her to him and rubbed her back in small circles, letting her cry out her anxiety and frustration.

“It’s all right,” he muttered. “Everything will be okay. You’ll crush those nasty exams just like you always do.”

“Nope,” Moira replied between sobs. “I can’t. I can’t do it. How could anyone do it?”

“You’ll get all A’s and a single B plus like you do every semester, and then you’ll rage about that B and we will all take you out and you will get so drunk that you’ll never mention it again.”

“Why am I so useless?”

“You are wonderful, Moira. Stop that.”

“No. I’m small and totally incapable and I can’t even get through one semester on my own, without relying on you and Varric and Cassie to - to prop me up and make me be.”

“Who said you had to do anything on your own? Did you get a call from home or something yesterday?” Moira shook her head, and Dorian sighed. “Good. Now come on and get dressed. I’ll take you to the diner. One plate of eggs and corned beef hash and you’ll forget that this ever happened.”

“You always buy me diner food when I’m sad,” grumbled Moira. “It’s a sadness bribe.”

“And yet it still works every time,” he replied, pulling her to her feet. “You are utterly powerless before the might of a greasy plate of home fries.” The corner of Moira’s mouth tugged into a smile, and she hugged her friend tightly.

“I am,” she said into his t-shirt. “Why do you put up with me?”

“Because you are the only family that I have left!” he said, brightly. “And family must always stick together.”

“Dorian…” she began, pulling away, her eyes beginning to fill with tears again.

“Nope, none of that,” he reprimanded. “Clothes and diner, in that order.”

Moira loved learning and study and research. She loved being at peace and alone with books or journals or pictures to analyze. But grades, especially finals, gave her terrible anxiety. Tests had never come easy to Moira, and her middle and high school years had been filled with long, dire nights of highlighting and pots of coffee and flashcards. She watched as her brothers and sister slept through whole classes only to waltz out of exams and quizzes with 90s and 100s. When they failed, their mother would look at Moira and marvel at how much more dedicated she was, wonder why all her children couldn’t be more like her. It didn’t make Moira feel any better. Being singled out was only more evidence of her separation, of her otherness, of how, even though she had never been treated any differently from any of her siblings, there as always the feeling, in height differences, in eye color, in ability, that she did not truly belong. Soon she would be returning home for the holidays, and this feeling would be increased tenfold. At least Dorian would be there this year to deftly deflect any slights toward her with his unending charm and clever one-liners.

Dorian was also correct in his assumption that the diner would be the perfect cure for Moira’s despair. Her mood had been considerably improved by the cold walk through barely shoveled sidewalks clogged with snow and slush. It reminded her of another walk with someone else, and her lips pursed in their efforts not to smile. By the time they opened the door to the diner and were hit with a blast of hot air and that special diner smell, a blend of burned coffee, bacon and syrup, she couldn’t drum up a single sob if she tried. It was quiet as well, early enough in the morning that the booths were populated only by locals in baseball caps and flannel shirts, no yelling students or screaming toddlers.

The waitress nodded them over to a booth by the window. They asked for coffee and looked at the menu without reading it.

“Why does anyone at a diner read the menu?” Dorian asked from behind his own. “No one goes to a diner without a definite idea of exactly what they want.”

“Eh, who knows,” said Moira. “Maybe they give them to us so we can start conversations about menus in diners.”

“Very meta,” replied Dorian, and she could almost hear his raised eyebrows.

They ordered and ate, discussing inconsequential things, the blizzard that had been predicted for the weekend, what they had gotten their friends for Christmas, how Moira’s mother might continue to suggest that they marry each other over break without actually verbalizing it. And of course, Moira’s love life.

“Have you two even gone on a date? Or is he moving so slow he’s actually going backwards again?” Dorian asked. Moira shifted in the squeaky booth.

“We actually have plans for this weekend,” Moira said into her coffee cup. “He’s taking me to Royeaux.”

“A fancy French restaurant where even the breadbasket costs more than a meal anywhere else? I am actually impressed.” Moira grinned.

“Ah well, if you’re impressed than he must be doing something right.”

“I still have to actually meet him, you know. Cassie and Jo say the same thing. Also Hawke and Sera are plotting some sort of… I think they called it a ‘vetting session.’ I’m not claiming they’re going to tie him to a chair and threaten death if he hurts you, but I’m also not ruling it out. At all.” Moira laughed.

“Sera already promised she’d put frogs in his bed if I asked. How she’s going to find where he lives and get enough frogs aren’t things I think I want to know.”

“Well, you’ll know where he lives soon enough,” said Dorian, suggestively. “Fancy French restaurant, then back to his place for some coffee, before you know it your pants are nowhere to be found and he’s underneath you -”

“Doiran!” cried Moira, blushing, and several heads turned in their direction. He smiled.

“You get the idea. Have you thought about it?”

It was pretty much the only thing Moira thought about these days during their advisory sessions, where he insisted on keeping everything strictly professional. She wondered what he would do if she trapped him against the desk, slowly ran her fingers down his shirt and lower, stopping to slowly, agonizingly, unfasten his pants. Would his breathing hitch, would murmur her name as she kissed his neck and took him in hand? Or would he fight her for dominance, spinning her so she was sitting on the desk, pushing her back and grazing her breasts through her shirt with his long, fine fingers before removing her top and bra altogether, leaving her half exposed and leaning back to look at her with dark eyes and an expression hungry for more?

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “I’ve thought about it.” She was grateful that Dorian didn’t point out the blush that must have been blooming on her cheeks.

“Good. Pick up some condoms before Friday or Saturday or whenever your date is. Safety first.”

“Thanks, dad,” Moira snorted.

“I demand that he return you with your virtue intact no later than nine thirty,” Dorian continued, his voice deepening and his eyebrows drawing together in a mock scowl. “Because I intend on policing the sexual habits of my tender blossom of a daughter, who, with her little female brain, cannot be trusted with her own body and choices.”

Moira grinned and hurled a balled up napkin at him.

 

Solas cancelled their session on Thursday, citing reasons which Moira chose not to interpret as nervousness. She slept in and spent her extra hour curled in her armchair with a mug of tea, not looking at the pile of textbooks and binders that glared at her from the floor. Each page of those binders and textbook was highlighted and annotated to within an inch of its life. They could wait until her afternoon was over before she poured over them again.

After school, Jo texted her to come shopping for what Jo referred to as “her big date.” She groaned inwardly, but went along with it because Jo did have impeccable fashion taste, even if it was a little too flashy for Moira at times. Jo picked her up in her little VW Beetle and drove them the twenty minutes to the mall in the next town. There Moira bought them Auntie Anne’s pretzel bites and Jo entertained her prolonged stop at Teavana before dragging her to what felt like every clothing store in the mall, looking for the perfect outfit. “This is not you,” or “You’re a winter, not an autumn,” she would say after each trip to the dressing room, and Moira would nod and pretend she knew what Jo was talking about. Each outfit looked nice to Moria. Finally, after two hours, Jo made cooing sounds when she emerged from her tenth dressing room in a dark tweed cocktail dress with a high neckline and Moira correctly guessed that they had finally arrived at the conclusion of their excursion.

“Are you excited?”” Jo asked her on the ride back to Thedas. Her new dress hung on a hook in the back of Jo’s car, and it shifted slightly every time Jo made a wild turn.

“Yes,” replied Moira with a soft smile. “I just hope it doesn’t snow.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine. We’ve had enough almost-but-not-really blizzards up here that I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Even if it does snow, at least you’ll look hot. Maybe you two can just stay in.” Jo grinned.

“I’m like, nervous I think?” Moira admitted. “It might just be my usual end of semester hysteria but I haven’t gone on a real date in years, it’s supposed to be different when you’re older, right? Plus he’s taking me to somewhere fancy and I’m going to mess up which fork to use.”

“It’s not that much different!” Jo encouraged. “You spend time with someone you like. You talk to each other, kiss or do other things if you want to. And just tell him it’s not working out if it’s not working out. Just relax. And work from the outside of your silverware in. Outside for for the appetizer, and so on.”

“The more people tell me to relax the more I feel like I shouldn’t be,” said Moira with a sigh. “But I think I can manage the other stuff. Thanks for the fork tip.” Jo’s phone beeped, and she took her eyes off the road to read the text. Moira gripped the dashboard and closed her eyes.

“Good!” Jo declared. “Now let’s go get some tacos. Hawke says she’ll meet us at Funchos.”

Moira didn’t get back home until later that night. The lights were off, and she turned on the news for a minute or two, where they were predicting around a foot or so of snow for the next day. Of course Mother Nature would be against her. She clicked off the T.V. and pulled out her phone.

-Are we still on for tomorrow night?-

**-Of course. Why do you ask-**

-News says snowpocalypse-

**-The news always says that. It will be fine-**

-Haha okay. You’ll come get me around 8?-

**-Yes. Address?-**

Moira texted him the address, then sat down in her chair and drew her knees up to her chest. Tomorrow she was going on a date with someone she really liked. He was going to take her to a nice restaurant, as daunting as that prospect was, and there was a strong possibility of ending the night in her bed. Or his. Warmth spread from her heart to her face, making her blush again in the dark light of the moon.

 

By eight pm there was six inches of snow on the ground.

Moira was dressed in the dress Jo had bought her, along with warm stockings and tall boots. Was it as cute as it could be? Nope. But she looked better than she did normally, it would keep her warm and dry, and that was literally all that mattered.

Solas had texted her earlier in the day to assure her that he would still be picking her up that evening, that their date was still on. Now she sat in her chair and fussed with journal articles without reading them, glancing out the window at every set of headlights that slowly passed down the street.

Dorian had left for work around six, giving her a quick peck on the cheek for good luck and firm instructions to text him if there was any reason he should find somewhere else to stay that night.

“It would be no sacrifice at all,” he proclaimed. Moira agreed with him but she didn’t say why. Dorian and Bull were the worst kept secret among their friend group, and Moira didn’t want to press. For all the good humored grief that he gave her, Moira knew that if Dorian wasn’t talking about a relationship, it was something important to him. She thanked him, and after he mentioned for what seemed like the twentieth time that night that she was free to help herself to the condoms in his bedside drawer she practically shoved him out the door.

A set of headlights came slowly down the street and pulled into her driveway. Her heart beat a tattoo, and she told it to calm down and shut the hell up. A figure emerged from the car and rushed toward the front door, umbrella aloft.

She waited for the doorbell to ring, nervously smoothing nonexistent creases in the folds of her dress. When she opened the door and his eyes flashed briefly at the sight of her, she silently thanked Jo for every moment of their long afternoon of shopping.

“Hey there!” said Moira, shyly.

“Good evening,” he said, offering her his free arm. “Are you ready to go?” Moira nodded, and after locking the door he led her down the snowy steps she had tried to clear off not an hour and a half before.

“I’m sorry the weather didn’t hold out,” said Moira when he opened the passenger side door for her.

“It’s fine,” he replied, in a manner that very much implied that it wasn’t. “It’s a minor setback.” He closed her door and walked around to get in on the driver’s side.

“Nah, it’s not a setback,” argued Moira. “I like the snow. It’s pretty.” Solas chuckled softy.

“It’s not pretty when you have to shovel it, or drive through it,” he replied, grumpily. Moira shrugged and looked out at the snow flying past the windshield against the darkness behind. Being in his car together was an entirely new level of intimacy. There was no desk between them, or the imagined watchful eyes of passers by as they walked. There was only the two of them, the radio playing some old song very low, the snow and the night that enveloped them like a blanket.

“Have you ever seen Star Wars?” Moira asked. Solas grunted back what she assumed was some version of a yes. “Driving in the snow always reminded me of going into hyperspace.” He didn’t reply at first, but his brow became even more furrowed, the corners of his mouth turned down. Moira went back to looking out the window until he shouted so loud she almost jumped out of her seat.

“Now hyperspace is all I can see!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. Moira blinked in surprise, and then burst into laughter at his exasperated expression. The lines on his face eased, and he smiled from the corner of his mouth.

The rest of the trip to Royeaux was passed with pleasant conversation and a warm atmosphere that had nothing to do with the heat pouring out if the vents on the dashboard. This geniality was instantly cooled upon parking, dashing through a wet, frigid parking lot, and reaching the door to Royeaux only to find it dark, with a note hastily taped to the front door.

“Due to inclement weather, Royeaux will be closing at 730 pm this evening. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

“This is ridiculous,” grumbled Solas, tapping his foot impatiently. “I am sorry Moira, I had no idea this restaurant would be so… so fickle.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Moira replied. “I know a place that’s always open around the corner, Doxa. We can go there, if you like gyros.” She pronounced the word with a hard “g.”

“Gyros?” he repeated, dubiously.

“Ugh, you’re not going to make me pronounce it like year-o’s, are you?” He smiled.

“But that is what they are actually called.”

“Not where I’m from. The place I’m thinking has falafel too, come on.” She grabbed his gloved hand, and she could feel its warmth even through the mitten around her own.

“You ever been to Doxa?” she asked. Solas shook his head. “I’m not making any promises. The food is good, but it’s not, you know, fancy restaurant good.”

“I am sure it will be more than adequate,” he replied. Moira snorted at his choice of words.

“Oh, an adequate? Well, let’s hope we can turn that into a ‘satisfactory,’ yeah? On the bright side, it’s literally always open.”

“I don’t usually go out to eat,” said Solas. “I prefer to cook at home.”

“You can cook?” she asked.

“I took some classes a few years ago. I’m not bad.”

“You have me beat. I can’t even put a turkey in the oven.”

“What?”

Moira told him the story of Friendsgiving, with exaggerated gestures and impressions of her friends as they walked along. The sidewalks were clear in some spots, yet to be shoveled or even salted in others, and the result was a strange, meandering walk around slush and piles of snow with frequent steps into the street. In a few minutes they reached the Greek place, where warm light from within spilled onto the carefully cleaned sidewalks without. There was a small line at the counter, nothing out of the ordinary, but the second Moira opened the door she immediately felt self-conscious. Solas had tried to take her to Royeaux, where the waiters wore vests and spoke in soft, enunciated tones about the evening’s specials over the sound of chamber music piped in through hidden speakers, where tables were covered in white cloths that were changed after each party, and where desserts were rolled out on a little cart.

There wasn’t a single bright orange formica table at this place that didn’t wobble, the chairs were scratched and mismatched, the air smelled like coriander and garlic (something Moira usually loved about Doxa) and the only soundtrack was the big, burly owner at the cash register shouting good naturedly to his son in the kitchen. It was so far removed from Royeaux that Moira felt a creeping sense of the same insecurity she had experienced when he had criticized her tattoos, that she was just a little kid, pretending at history, pretending at dating, pretending at sophistication. They ordered at the counter and sat down to wait at the last unoccupied table, one that wobbled with the slightest touch until Moira grabbed a stack of napkins from the dented metal holder and shoved them under one of the legs. Her cheeks burned from embarrassment, but Solas only smiled at her thoughtfully.

“I was on a dig in Greece one,” began Solas. “There was a small food stall near the site, and I went there for lunch with my associates one afternoon. I was covered in dirt and my Greek was terrible, and the others wouldn’t order for me, I think they were laughing at my expense. But the woman who ran the stall still smiled at me when she handed me my kebabs and patted my hand, like a supportive mother with a foolish child. It encouraged me at the time, until it was explained to me that it might have been due to the fact that I overpaid for my lunch by a very embarrassing amount, and that I had actually ordered ‘hat pasta’ instead of ‘chicken kebab.’” Moira grinned at his story, and felt more at ease.

“Falafel or gyros?” she asked after a moment, stressing the “g” even harder.

“Falafel, I think,” he replied, amused. “There’s this place in New York City, somewhere in Greenwich Village - best falafel I’ve ever had.”

“No one calls it ‘New York City,’” said Moira. “That’s how you give it away that you’re just a tourist.”

“The accent didn’t give it away first?”

“Nope. Plenty of people with accents live in the city. That’s the right term for it - the city.”

“Forgive me, I didn’t realize I was in the presence of an expert.”

“You are forgiven,” she said, imperiously. “And not an expert, just born there.”

“Really? I thought you said your family lived in Westchester?”

“They do now,” she replied. “Until my mom threatened my dad with divorce we - two adults and four kids - lived in a two bedroom apartment on 9th and 74th. Then dad hemmed and hawed about leaving the city and bought the house in Westchester.”

“Did they also buy you your house here? Or are you renting?” It was an innocent question, but Moira froze, and chewed the inside of her lip.

“Uh, no,” she said, absently rubbing the tattoo on her wrist. “I inherited some money, bought it with that.”

“Ah, forgive me, I misunderstood.”

“It’s cool.” For once, Moira was grateful for her complete inability to mask her emotions. Solas was easily able to read enough on her face to know not to ask about the subject any more, and she changed the topic to how Dorian had moved in instead. She avoided the part where he had been cut off and kicked out by his dad, and stressed how he had spent so much time at her house she demanded that he move in, how she insisted he didn’t have to pay rent and how she always found a few hundred dollars a month sneaked into her room somehow.

The owner brought them their food and two beers and gave Moira, who he was used to seeing a few times a week, a look that said “not bad!” in regards to her date before clomping back behind the counter. The food was good, the beer was better.

“Doctor DeFer?” Solas repeated after Moira had asked him about the department chair around a mouthful of rice. He swallowed. “Decent as a supervisor, but so strict when it comes to history.”

“Strict?”

“You know. No suppositions or small leaps of logic over evidence, even if the conclusion presented is the most likely scenario. She clung to the Clovis interpretation long after the theory had been disproven, claiming that the body of evidence against it was not sufficient to truly discount them as the first inhabitants of the Americas.”

“She sounds fun at parties.” He laughed.

“Dr. DeFer insists on being the best dressed, the most charming, most attractive, and most competent member of the administration, especially at fundraising galas. But outside of that sphere, I do find her a little… dogmatic.”

“No one uses that word.”

“Fine. She’s a hardass. And you had better watch yourself, because she’s going to give you nothing but grief over your thesis.”

“How so?”

“I think her goal is to try and make every grad student cry at least once. You’ll have to defend your thesis to her, which, by the way, is heavily based on supposition, in front of her and three other members of the staff, including myself.”

“Professor Anders will give me an A no matter what I write or say,” she said. “He gives points because someone shows passion for history. That’s no way to judge anyone.”

“Lucky for you, since his voice will be the one to stand against Dr. DeFer’s.”

“What about your opinion?” she asked slyly, reaching across the table.

“Well, that depends, doesn’t it?” he said, lowly, taking her hand in one of his. His tone sent a thrill through her.

“Depends on what?” she asked. When had her mouth gotten so dry?

“On whether or not you ever decide to actually take my advice and incorporate more primary sources into your first chapter!” He grinned - he knew exactly what he was doing. When had things gotten so easy between them?

Moira suddenly became aware of how their legs pressed together underneath the small table, and a Joni Mitchell song her mother used to sing drifted across her mind. In the meantime, Solas had begun to gently trace the outline of the hieroglyphics on her wrist with the tip of his index finger. His hands were warm - her own fingers were always so cold - and she imagined other things he could be doing with them, other tattoos he could be tracing with fingers and lips and tongue.

“Do you want to head out?” she asked. He looked up at her with dark eyes, had he been contemplating along the same lines? Imagining what other images and words were inked onto her skin beneath the flimsy fabric of her dress, pictured himself removing each layer one by one, slowly revealing to him her body and its pictures?

“That would be… yes,” he said.

They paid and cleared out of Doxa with startling rapidity. On their walk back to the municipal lot where they had parked they were obligated to keep to the road exclusively, as the sidewalks were now completely blocked by the snow. When they finally reached the lot, they were faced by yet another dilemma.

Solas’ car had been plowed in.

“You have got to be joking,” he spat when they were close enough to see what had happened. Tall drifts of snow had been plowed into the front and back of the car, and pushing or maneuvering out would be completely impossible.

“Relax!” said Moira, brightly. “I’ll go see if Doxa has some shovels we can borrow!” Doxa did have shovels, and the two of them set to clearing the worst of the snow in front of the car. Solas tried to protest her aid, citing her dress and stockings, but she shook her head and yelled “Female Studies 101!” back at him with a grin. Her stockings did tear when she caught her shovel on her left leg, but it didn’t hurt and she didn’t mind. The snow was cleared away inside of twenty minutes, and Moira returned the shovels to the guys at Doxa, leaving him to warm up the car. But by the time she came back to Solas, he was leaning against the hood of his car, massaging his left temple, eyes downcast.

“I am sorry Moira,” he began. “This night has been nothing like I had pictured.” Moira stopped. She thought they had been having a nice time. Better a time than she would have had trying to fit in at Royeaux anyway. Was he just not feeling it?

“What are you saying?” she asked, carefully.

“Nothing has gone right!” he exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air. “Royeaux was closed, your stockings are ruined, we ended the evening with manual labor…” he drifted off with a glare into the night. Oh! Was that all? Moira’s heart slowly descended from its leap into her throat.

“I wanted to just -” Solas continued, “I mean we’ve danced around each other long enough and -” A snowball hit him in the back. He turned to see her armed with another, casually tossing it up and down with a mischievous smile. She watched as relief, understanding and something that could only be called competitiveness all bloomed on his face at once and she dove for cover behind a dumpster before his first snowball could hit her. I whizzed past her shoulder and landed in the lot behind her.

“It is to be war between us?” she heard him call as another snowball hit the top of the dumpster with a bang and rained snowflakes down onto her.

“I’m going to drop you harder than fifty stabs in the back dropped Caesar!” she cried back, fleeing her position and moving closer to where she thought he had ended up, pitching snowballs as she went for covering fire.

“Harder than Alexander dropped Darius III?” He responded with a volley of his own, and now she knew where he was.

“Harder than Crazy Horse dropped Custer!” Moira inelegantly dove behind the snowbank she saw the snowballs come from and even more ungracefully landed on top of him with an “oof!”

She was straddling him as they lay in the snow, inches away from each other’s face, sharing the same breath, the closest they had been in months. Her knees were freezing, kneeling in the snow, but everywhere where her body touched his felt electrified, teased into hyper awareness.

“You’re beautiful,” he breathed, and lifted his face up and kissed her. Any doubts Moira might have had melted away in the heat of that kiss, the way he buried his fingers in her hair, slid his tongue over hers, teased her bottom lip with his teeth. Moira soon became aware of another sensation, one so out of place with what she was expecting it was a minute before she could realize what it was, and when she did a silly smile spread over her face.

“Is your phone on vibrate or are you just happy to see me?” He blushed deeply, and let go of her long enough to maneuver his hand into his pocket and grab it. He glanced at the screen, intending to turn it on silent, at the same time a text came through. She watched as his eyes moved over the words and the change over his features was as instantaneous as it was horrifying. The color drained out of his face, his eyes were wide and unblinking and he turned to look back at her with strange, jerked motions.

“I-I have to go,” he mumbled, gently pushing her off of him and rising to his feet. What? What could that message possible have said? His back was to her, and Moira was suddenly freezing. She wrapped her arms around herself.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, incredulous. What could be so important? “What happened?” He kept shaking his head and indicated for her to get into the car.

“Solas, what’s wrong?” she asked again as she threw open the door, her voice raised, annoyed and frustrated at an infinite amount of things.

“There’s been… I have to go to the city tonight. It’s an emergency.”

“You’ll never make it in this snow!” she cried. “The roads won’t be clear until the morning, at least!”

“I have to try,” he said. “I am sorry Moira. Clearly this night was not meant to be.” Moira bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying anything further, to keep the hurt at his last statement buried deep inside. They drove in silence the whole way back to her house. He pulled into the driveway with a crunch, and Moira wanted nothing more than to be gone her hand was on the handle before his voice stopped her.

“Moira…” he managed to say before she threw open the door.

“What?” she snapped back at him, furious.

“That came out wrong, before,” he said, with an effort. “I’ll call you, alright?” Moira sighed and nodded her head, taking her hand off the door handle. What did Jo always say? 90% of all romantic comedies could have been solved in the first ten minutes if anyone used even basic communication skills? She faced the window, because she wouldn’t be able to say what she had to say to his face.

“Solas… look,” she began. “I don’t know what you think is going on here, but I like you, I don’t just want to… I don’t want something casual, okay? You don’t want to talk about what’s going on, I get it, we all have secrets. But this whole acting like the night was ruined, that it wasn’t even meant to be because it wasn’t perfect, that makes me feel like shit, you know?”

“Moira,” he picked up her hand from where it rested on her lap. She turned to him, and he kissed her gently on the lips, and rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t want casual either. I’m sorry I have to leave it off like this. I promise I will call you when I can.”

“Okay,” she replied. “Please don’t die trying to drive to the city in a blizzard?” Despite everything, he smiled.

“I will not die trying to drive to the city in a blizzard. You have my word.” Moira squeezed his hand and exited the car. She stood in the shelter of her porch as she watched the taillights of his car drive off into the night, and hummed a song to herself.

She opened the front door, and was immediately set upon by Dorian, who demanded to know why she was wet, why her stockings were ripped, why he had left without coming in, and how the night had gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> History Stuff that Might Interest You 
> 
> -The 'Clovis" people were for a long time generally believed to be the first inhabitants of the Americas. Though this theory has been pretty soundly disproved, some historians love it too much to let it go. 
> 
> Other Stuff the Might Interest You  
> -The Joni Mitchell song Moira is thinking of it called 'Come in From the Cold' and it was the original title of this whole fic, before I decided to name it after Moira's thesis instead.


	5. January

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up there, this chapter is NSFW

“FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE!” Moira and Sera hugged each other and jumped up and down. Hawke tackled Varric to the couch and began to kiss him, sloppily. Dorian and Bull suddenly found the need to drift off into the kitchen together, continuing their ruse of being the worst kept secret in all of Thedas.

And then Moira’s phone chirped.

_**-Happy New Year, Moira-** _

It was from Solas. Moira grinned and thumbed a reply wishing him the same and sent it off into the ether as she sank into her chair.

“That’s from him, yeah?” said Sera, making a feeble grab at the phone. “Lemme see!”

“No!” said Moira, trying to hold it out of her reach. “No way!” There really wasn’t any reason Sera couldn’t read the messages. No risque messages or photos. There wasn’t much of anything besides a few conversations over the course of the last two weeks

He still hadn’t said why he had so suddenly abandoned their date so many weeks ago, or what he was still doing in New York City. But, true to his word, he had not died on the drive there and he had called her, more than once. Her few days home for Christmas had been made bearable with both the comforting presence of Dorian and the knowledge that she could maybe look forward to a phone call from Solas around the end of the day. They talked about the weather, about books they had read, about the historical significance and accuracy about a new play on Broadway, everything and nothing, and never talked about their relationship or where it was going.

Being around her family hadn’t been that bad, all things considered. But she was still eager to return home and spend New Year’s Eve with whoever was around. Sera always stayed in Thedas and Hawke and Varric had been happy to come back from the hotel in the city where they had been since the semester ended.

Varric didn’t like to go home either.

Bull had shown up out of nowhere with a smile and another few bottles of champagne and thrown himself on the couch next to Sera around 10 pm without any explanation, although with the look on Dorian’s face Moira didn’t really need one. It was simple and happy to be surrounded by people that liked her, that loved each other, and she leaned her head on the arm of the chair and laughed to herself.

“Totally wasted, you!” said Sera loudly.

“Am not!” she replied. “And get a room guys!” she cried to Hawke and Varric who were still enthusiastically making out on the couch. “That couch has been through enough!”

Varric muttered something against Hawke’s neck and gently pushed her off of him, grinning like a lunatic. Dorian and Bull slipped back into the living room and some musician on the TV began a song Moira had never heard before.

“It’s a new year,” said Hawke. “Full of new trouble to get into.”

“If Cassie were here she’d make us all do our New Year’s resolutions,” said Varric. “Is it okay that I’m glad she’s not here?”

“Resolutions are stupid,” said Sera. “Just people making stupid promises they can’t keep.”

“Worst time for the gym,” grumbled Bull. “Crowded with people who don’t respect each other or the equipment. It’ll be February until there’s one day without an injury.”

“See!” cried Sera. “People getting hurt because of some dumb tradition.”

“I think they’re okay,” said Moria, quietly. “I mean, I haven’t made any, but whatever excuse people need to try and change their lives, right?”

No one had a whole lot to say to that, even Sera, and everyone mostly shrugged in agreement and went back to watching the TV.

Moira usually held with Sera, Varric and Bull. New Year’s Resolutions were mostly stupid things that didn’t matter and that people forgot about within a week or two. But she had made a resolution this year, declared to no one but herself, afraid that if she spoke it aloud the magic of it would be destroyed.

So she joined everyone else instead, and eagerly took Sera up on her offer to get everyone more drinks.

 

Cassie woke her up at noon the next afternoon.

“Do you know what time it is?” yawned Moira as Cassie sat down on her bed. She wondered briefly how Cassie had gotten in, then remembered she had given Cassie a key at some point last year for ‘emergencies.’ This scrap of memory pumped enough adrenaline into her that she suddenly sat up in bed and was immediately struck down again by the overwhelming headache that hit her like a fist.

“What’s wrong?” Moira mumbled. “Are you okay?” Cassie shifted on the bed uncomfortably, then pulled one of Moira’s books out from under her, read the cover with disinterest, and tossed it further down the bed.

“I… I need a favor,” she said, as if she were asking Moira to go to the gallows for her.

“I’ll be your Sydney Carton,” murmured Moira, without really knowing what she was saying. Cassie hardly ever asked for anything besides someone to pass the ketchup. For her to show up on January 1st needing help was… troubling, to say the least.

“What?” asked Cassie.

“Nothing, what’s up?”

“Would… would it be okay if I crashed here for a week or two?” Cassie wasn’t meeting her eyes, and kept fidgeting. Moira raised an eyebrow at the behavior and Cassie took it completely out of context. “I’m sorry! I didn’t want to impose on you or anything I just need a place to stay before the dorms are open again and I-”

“Cassandra,” Moira stated firmly. She had never seen Cassie this at a loss. Cassie was always self assured and decisive. “Cassie, it’s fine, of course you can stay. I have a whole bedroom that is swiftly becoming a second library and junk room. Move all your stuff in there for a few weeks. Hell, move in for good. I don’t care.” She reached out a hand to touch her shoulder, and Cassie leapt back like Moira’s hands were made of fire.

“I’m sorry!” she moaned. Moira was getting more freaked out by the second.

“Cassie, what happened? Why are you home so early? Did… did someone hurt you?” Cassie saw where Moira’s mind had gone and laughed darkly.

“No, nothing like that. I’d kill anyone who tried to hurt me, you know that. I’m sorry I’m acting so weird.” She took a deep breath. “You know how my brother died when I was in high school?”

Moira did know the whole horrific story. She didn’t know Cassie back then, but Cassie had told her the sad tale very late one night, when they were sharing a fifth of vodka out on the soccer bleachers. Anthony had been tall and strong and Cassie’s favorite member of her whole family. He snuck her into a bar one January night to celebrate the end of her senior midterms, and a fight had broken out while they were there. Anthony tried to break it up, tried to do the right thing, and had gotten stabbed five times in the chest for his trouble. Cassie had held him as he lay there gasping for air because his lungs were filling with blood, held his hand in the ambulance as they EMTs tried to resuscitate him and had to be forcibly separated from him when he was declared dead on arrival.

Cassie didn’t finish her senior year but they passed her anyway, and it was a long time before she was okay enough to go to college.

“It’ll be eight years since he died this month, and my parents they don’t… They’re assholes,” she tried to finish, but the words were bursting out of her mouth faster than she could call them back. “And I don’t want to be home or listen to the nonsense they’re trying to sell me about my future. I can make my own way, I don’t need them or their plans to tell me what I want or need. So can I stay?”

“Go make Dorian help you get your shit out of the car and put it in the room next door,” said Moira. Cassie chuckled.

“I’d probably get it done faster without him,” she replied.

“I have feelings too!” cried Dorian from across the hall.

“Eavesdropping means you owe me breakfast!” said Moira.

 

Cassie was the best roommate Moira had ever had.

Not that Dorian was hard to live with. But he was very much like Moira, leaving his stuff out in common spaces and forgetting whose food belonged to who in the fridge.

Cassie cleaned up after herself and the rest of them, labeled everyone’s food with a permanent marker, emptied the dishwasher and once, Moira had caught her vacuuming her bedroom. Far from being a chatty or overbearing roommate, Cassie mostly kept to herself. She read in the living room, or typed on her laptop at the island in the kitchen, a look of intense determination on her face. Cassie worked for some online news network, blogging about world events. Her behavior freaked Moira out a little bit, but she had no idea what her friend was going through, and didn’t know what to say.

But she knew someone who did, and though the only thing Cassie and Varric had ever seen eye to eye on was his books, he was more than willing to help.

“Hey Cassie?” Moira said one day. For a few moments she was met with nothing but the incessant tapping of Cassie’s fingers on her keyboard, and Moira wondered if she had even been heard.

“Yes?” Cassie finally answered. Her eyes were glued to her computer screen.

“Varric is coming over. He says he wants to talk to you.” Cassie blinked at her, then shrugged and went back to typing, like nothing Moira said had any bearing on her at all. Varric showed up a half hour later, assessed the situation like he was a doctor triaging in the ER and dragged Cassie away from her laptop.

“I can’t go out!” said Cassie as Moira shut Cassie’s computer. “I have so much to do!”

“I need someone to beta my new book,” Varric said, holding her coat open. “And you’re the only one I thought to call.” Cassie slipped into her coat slowly, taken aback but still suspicious.

“What about Hawke?” she replied, warily.

“We both know Hawke couldn’t edit her way out of a paper bag,” he said. “She didn’t get herself through English 101 all on her own, that’s for sure.” Somewhat placated, Cassie followed him out the door and into his car.

“Do you think it’ll work?” Dorian asked Moira as they watched the pair drive away.

“There’s like a 45% chance they’ll murder each other, but if that doesn’t happen I think he’ll be able to help her out.”

“Well, I’ll make sure to get a shovel and some tarp, just in case one of them calls later.”

Cassie didn’t come home before Dorian left for work. Moira hugged him goodbye and went back to her reading, but a half hour later Dorian texted her a picture of Cassie, Hawke, Varric and Cullen of all people crowded into a two person booth at the Emporium and laughing. Happy. She smiled to herself; her plan had actually worked! And it had a side effect too! Whatever weirdness that was always lingering between Hawke and Cullen, she hoped it was healing. Cullen was doing so much better at Skyhold, was managing his addiction so well, and while she still didn’t know what had happened between him and Hawke back when he was at Kirkwall, she knew enough about recovering addicts to understand that rebuilding burned bridges was an important step to never looking back at past regrets.

It was late at night when the doorbell rang. Moira perked up from her reading, alert and nervous. Cassie had a key, and it was too early for Dorian to be coming home from his shift at the Emporium.

Moira walked to the foyer and wished she was tall enough to look through the top window of the front door, but she settled for calling through it instead.

“Uh… who is it?” she asked.

“It’s me,” said a muffled voice.

It was Solas.

Moira threw open the front door immediately and she barely had time to register the hunger in his eyes before he was on her, pressing his lips against hers, burying his fingers in her hair. A sharp jolt of want cut through her and she stroked her tongue along his bottom lip before he bent his head to her neck, planting kisses along her jawline and nibbling gently at her throat, smoothing each bit of skin that touched his teeth with the soft brush of his tongue. He ran the tip of his thumb down her spine and her skin became electrified, every point where they met hummed with awareness. She wanted to give in, wanted to let him have her there in the doorway, knew it would be so easy to pull him inside and shut the door behind her, let him push her against the wall… She tried to take a step inside but he pulled her back toward him, possessive, needy, and that’s when she knew this wasn’t right, and she shoved her own wants to the back of her mind. Something was wrong.

She pushed away from him, shaking her head.

“Solas-” she began, but it’s as far as she got before he jumped back and almost stumbled down the steps in his effort to get away from her, babbling apologies.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have- I knew it was wrong-” Moira caught the sleeve of his marbled grey peacoat, trapping him.

“Don’t go,” she said, and hoped that the intensity of her tone made up for the softness of her face. She couldn’t let him get away, not again, not before she knew why he came, what was wrong, what had happened all those weeks ago. “Please. Come inside?” For a moment his body was a taut wire, one foot inside her door, one foot on her stoop, wrapped in that ephemeral moment before a decision when all the paths are open and the possibilities are endless.

She saw the moment the wire snapped, when the indecision in his face crumbled into relief and regret and hope and resignation. She changed her grip from his coat to his hand, and led him inside the house. He let her hang up his coat and guide him to the coach, where they sat, and he passed a hand over his wearied face and sighed.

“My friend, Sophie,” he began. She squeezes the hand in hers tighter.“The phone call - the text I got that night. She’s been sick for a long time, she was taking a turn for the worse. Her idiot husband was always dragging her to these faith healers, thinking those lunatics would help her. She finally… the night I left she checked herself into the hospital.” He exhaled, long and sharp. “She knew there wasn’t much time left, I should have known. But I thought - I never really believed she would die. She was… she seemed like she would go on forever.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and cringed at how inauthentic, how automatic it sounded. She didn’t know how to deal with loss. She had never known or remembered the losses she suffered. “That came out… I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“I don’t think anyone ever knows what to say,” he said absently. He traced invisible patterns in the palm of her hands. “There were things I had to do in the city after the funeral. It was two weeks until everything was settled, until I could return to school. I was driving back to town tonight and I had every intention of going home but before I knew it I was here.” His fingers moved up her arm, lightly outlining figure eights on the inside of her wrist.

“Well, you’re not alone,” Moira said. “I’m glad you came here. You can stay, if you want to.” She wondered how he would interpret her comment, or how he wanted to interpret it. His eyes flicked to hers.

“Okay,” he said. “I would like that.”

He followed her to her bedroom, and she cringed when she flicked on the small, dim light on her nightstand. Her bed and the floor around it was covered in books, and her dirty clothes were piled up in one corner. In her mind Solas’ home was immaculate, not a single item out of place, and once again she felt the vast gulf of experience between them. But she squared her shoulders and walked into the room anyway.

“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the bed. “You can shove that stuff on the floor.” He sat on the edge of the bed, moving some books aside.

“Rossetti?” he asked, reading the author on one of the covers.

“She’s amazing,” Moira was fiddling with her record player. “Do you have any objection to Joni Mitchell?” She remembered the music that had sprung into her head on their first real date. He shook his head without looking up, flipping through the book of poems. Moira put on Clouds, her favorite album, and lowered the needle. The record crackled and popped before the first song softly began to play, slipping onto the scene with a gentle breath of plucked guitar strings. She turned and breathed out. He was sitting on her bed, head bent in concentration over a particular page of poetry, and the whole tableau was so unbelieveable Moira didn’t know what to do.

He looked up at her, and she was trying hard not to stare at his lips but Sera’s voice was in her head telling her to stop being stupid and go for it, and before she could remind herself to take her time she had crossed the short span between them, framed his face in her hands and tilted it upwards to steal a kiss.

Solas’ lips were warm as they moved against hers, and she soon became aware of a warm hand brushing along her side and coming to rest on her waist, pulling her closer towards him. She made a quiet, anxious sound in the back of her throat, expecting any moment for him to pull away, to turn away again at this last boundary and run off into the night. When he pushed her hips away ever so slightly she growled in frustration and nipped his bottom lip with her teeth on her way to separating from him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, only half resigned to the idea that the night was over before anything had happened.

“I just -” he cupped her face with his hand and brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to do something just because…” He looked away from her, focused his gaze on the record player that had just started playing a cheery tune that was completely incongruous to the situation at hand.

“Solas.” She was firm. He had to understand. “If you don’t want-”

“No!” he interrupted, quickly. He gazed at her in agony, his expression full of thoughts he was unwilling or unable to express.

“I want this,” she said, slowly. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since the day you recited poetry in your class and I’ve wanted you every single day I had to sit across a desk from you and talk about Ancient Egypt like I didn’t want you to take me on that stupid desk right then and there.” She wasn’t not sure if it was her tone or her words, but there was a glimmer of recognition in Solas’ eyes that she saw a split second before he twisted his hand into the fabric at the back of her shirt and pulled her down on top of him, and Moira gasped into his mouth in pleasure and surprise.

She shrugged out of her cardigan as he slid his mouth over her throat, tasting and kissing. She got one hand under his shirt to slide up the smooth skin of his stomach and chest. His hands gripped her ass, forcing their hips together, and the feel of him growing hard and eager against her was enough to elicit a thready moan from deep within her. She broke apart from him to pull her shirt up over her head and when she looked down she her own sense of being overwhelmed reflected in the worry on his face.

“What’s wrong, professor?” she asked slyly. “Is my presentation not adequate?” His breath hitched.

“More than,” he choked out, running his fingers over the swell of her breasts, struggling to maintain his composure. She saw his eyes flying over her torso, reading the words inked there, lips moving as he silently recited them.

“Do you want to see them all?” She was shy when she said it, remembering his first reaction to her tattoos. He glanced at her, then twisted their bodies around, threw her against the pillows on the bed and crawled up to lay between her legs, his tongue ghosting over the first quote he came to, her lower left rib, Hammet.

“‘I don’t mind a reasonable amount of trouble,’” he read, finding the zipper of her skirt and pulling it down. “Personal philosophy of yours, Miss Lavellan?” She moaned in response and he turned his attention to the one above, and it didn’t escape her notice that he skipped the Vonnegut quote and went straight to Morrison.

“If you surrendered to the air you could ride it.” He yanked her skirt and stockings down her legs and threw them into a corner of the room. She thought it was terribly unfair that he should still be so dressed while she was down to nothing but her bra and panties.

“Keep reading,” she whispered into his ear. Then she set to work on the buttons of his shirt before giving up on the slippery, tiny things and shoving it over his head instead. He hissed when she ran her hand over him.

“A word after a word after a word is power,” he gasped. She unfastened his pants and pushed them down his legs, pausing briefly to palm him through his boxer-briefs.

“Don’t stop,” she said, before returning her attention to the hardness between his legs.

“Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos,” he said, and she didn’t know if he understood what he was saying but the sound of his voice speaking those particular words sent a thrill through her anyway.

“I want to do to you what spring does to the cherry trees,” she translated. He ran a hand between her thighs, teasing her, and she lifted her hips to follow the feel of him. He froze suddenly, and passed a hand over his face.

“Moira, I didn’t think - I don’t have anything.” Moira blinked at him, then laughed softly as understanding dawned on her. She rolled onto her stomach to reach the top drawer of the nightstand, to grab the condoms Dorian had insisted on supplying her with a month ago, and she felt his hand meet the tattoo between her shoulder blades. She paused and allowed his long fingers to trace the outline of the map, the edges of the continents, the expanse of the oceans, the Bradbury quote she had tattooed in Courier New beneath it.

“We are an impossibility in an impossible universe,” she recited as his fingers left her skin. She opened the drawer and grabbed one of the small squares of foil, and he unclasped her bra and slid both of his hands down the curve of her back. She shuddered beneath his touch, biting her lip to keep a long moan from escaping. He reached the edge of her panties and stopped, as if waiting for something.

“Off, please,” she mumbled, and he rushed to comply.

She turned over again and he gazed at her naked form for the first time. His eyes were huge and dark and Moira would have sat through a hundred more advisory sessions on opposite sides of his desk if she got to see him look at her like that again at the end of them. He ghosted the pads of his fingers over her bare breast before bending his head to twirl his tongue around a pebbled nipple, and she whimpered at the sensation. He turned his attention to the other side of her body, gently massaging the breast he left behind. She clasped the back of his head and he worked his thumb gently against her folds, tantalizing her with touches as soft as the brush of a butterfly’s wing. She arched into him, and he left her completely to shed his boxer-briefs and slide the condom down his length. Then Solas returned to her, nuzzling her neck and planting kisses along her collarbone.

She reached down and gripped him, gave him a long and determined stroke that had him shuddering and twisting a hand into her hair, a hint of his fraying restraint. Moira lifted her hips, and that was all the further encouragement he needed. He slid into her in one powerful thrust that had her lolling her head back and shutting her eyes in satisfaction. He exhaled, low and long. She wrapped her legs around him when he began to move, pressing her heels into the small of his back to push him deeper inside. The began to move together, sharing sighs and heady breaths and soft kisses, but it wasn’t enough. Before long he rose to his knees and hooked her ankles over his shoulders and plunged himself into her, roughly.

“Solas!” she choked out, raking her nails down his chest, delighting in the cracks in his barrier of control. He continued to move inside her, and used the added space between them to slip a finger down to softly stroke her core. Then it felt like lightning moved through her veins, skipping up and down her body before converging beneath his hand and radiating waves of pleasure that made her throw her hands back against the bed, shaking and moaning. He followed her with a groan, and shuddered out his orgasm before collapsing on top of her, his face buried in the crook of her shoulder as she slowly rubbed lazy circles on his back.

 

The first sensation Moira became aware of upon waking was that she was very warm. Light from the windows was pooled on the bed, hitting her eyes, and she wondered why she had forgotten to shut the curtains the night before.

Awareness soon extended beyond temperature and light. She felt a naked chest against her back, an arm curled around her body, soft breath on the back of her neck. The events of the night before flooded her mind in a rush of moans and heat and pleasure and shredded barriers and she sat bolt upright in bed, startling her sleeping partner.

“Hmm?” he mumbled. “Moira?” Was Solas a morning person? The thought was so absurd in light of the circumstances that she laughed softly. How loud had they been last night? Had Dorian heard? Oh god, had Cassie heard them? Her racing thoughts were arrested by a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“It’s too early,” he grumbled. “Come back to bed.”

“It’s past seven,” she whispered. “I thought you’d have somewhere to be.”

“This is where I want to be.”

Moira felt her heart leap into her throat, and tried to remind herself that he was tired, he was under stress, he didn’t know what he was saying. Slowly, cautiously, she allowed him to pull her back down to the bed, where he tucked her in beside him once more, and planted a soft kiss to the back of her shoulder. Maybe not a morning person then. Moira smiled and pressed herself closer to him. That was okay. She wasn’t too much of a morning person either. Moira tried to concentrate on the feeling of the moment, and ignore the scrambling feeling somewhere deep in the back of her mind, the part of her that still remained rational, that section of her soul that was panicking at the thought of how deep she was in this whole thing that she and Solas hadn’t even put a name too yet.

She managed to drift back to an uneasy sleep for approximately one hour and forty-five minutes, at which point there was a merry knock on her door, and she knew she would have no peace for the rest of the day.

“Rise and shine, sweethearts!” Dorian called through the door. She could hear his shit-eating grin, and threw the pillow behind her head toward her bedroom door, missing entirely. “Bull’s made breakfast for the four of us!”

“C’mon,” she said, shaking Solas awake. “He won’t stop until we come get breakfast.”

“Who’s Bull?” Solas asked as he rolled toward the edge of the bed, peering down on the floor for his clothes.

“Dorian’s boyfriend,” she answered, throwing off her covers and slipping down toward the foot of the bed. She paused to stretch her arms above her head, and then glanced back at a small noise behind her. Solas was staring at her, and the look in his eyes made her face go crimson. It reminded her of what had happened in her bed not seven hours before, and she felt the heat pool low in her belly. She bit her lip and was about to say something before the knocking on the door began again, startling them both.

“Don’t want the crepes to get cold!” Dorian said. By the time Moira looked back at Solas, he was already pulling on his pants over his boxer briefs.

When they emerged five minutes later, clothed and as composed as could possibly be under the circumstances, Bull was standing at the kitchen counter, extremely focused on something bubbling in a small pan. Dorian grinned at them and motioned them over to the kitchen table, where he had laid four places.

“Mimosa?” he asked as they sat down, plunking a pitcher of the orange drink in the middle of the table.

“Yes, thank you,” replied Solas. Dorian filled his glass and Moira looked between the two of them anxiously, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Doiran then filled Moira’s without asking, and filled it again when she finished the first glass a little too quickly.

“Alright Boss,” said Bull, placing two platters of crepes on the table. “Left one is strawberries and cream, right one is apple cinnamon. Hope you like sweet stuff because I think I might have made way too much.” He grinned, sat down next to Dorian, and helped himself to breakfast. With a shrug to Moira, Solas followed suit, and for a minute or two the kitchen was permeated by the uncomfortable non-silence of clinking silverware.

“Bull, these crepes are fucking delicious,” said Moira, finally.

“Thanks!” he replied. “Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” This was good. Maybe everyone could be distracted from the glaring issue at hand through the benefit of pleasant conversation. Moira had read enough Jane Austen to know how to pull this off.

“Is Cassie still asleep?” she asked Dorian.

“Maybe,” he said. “But she’s not asleep here.” Moira’s eyes grew wide and Dorian laughed.

“Nothing like that,” he clarified. “She’s sleeping it off over at Hawke and Varric’s place.” He flicked his phone screen on and showed Moira a picture from Varric, featuring Cassie asleep on the couch in his living room and Cullen passed out on the floor. “The four of them had a pretty wild night.”

“Yeah?” she answered absently. “Did Hawke and Cullen finally bury the hatchet?”

“Buried it deep into a bottle of Johnny Walker black,” Doiran said. “But enough about them. I noticed you still haven’t introduced us to a certain someone.” He was wagging his finger. “I thought I raised you better than this,” he heaved with an affected sigh. Right. No avoiding this then, huh?

“Solas, this is my roommate Dorian, and his boyfriend, Iron Bull. No don’t make that face,” she rounded on Dorian when she saw he was about to protest the title of ‘boyfriend.’ “You want to keep it a secret from everyone else that’s fine, but I’ve had it with pretending I don’t hear him sneaking out of the house at seven every morning.” Bull laughed.

“I am pretty bad at sneaking,” he concurred. “Not really my style.” He stuck his hand out to Solas, and they shook hands. “Iron Bull is more of a title on the rugby or football field,” he continued. “You can just call me Bull and we can leave it at that.”

“A pleasure,” the professor answered. He shook Dorian’s hand next, and then the four of them settled in to the excellent breakfast set before them, to Moira’s complete amazement. They discussed Bull’s methods for crepe-making, the weather, how Moira was coming along on her thesis, (she grinned like an idiot when he replied, “adequately”) and Dorian’s upcoming challenges in the semester ahead, for which Solas had a few good points of advice.

“Mind if I catch a ride back to campus with you?” Bull asked Solas when the professor announced that he should be getting back to campus soon. “Got a winter session class starting in about a half hour.”

“Not at all,” replied Solas. He and Moira returned to her room to collect the last of his things, including his wallet, which they found somehow stuffed between her bed and the wall.

“So…” said Moira, lamely. She still didn’t know what they were, or what the previous night had meant to him.

“Can I see you for dinner tonight?” he asked, hurriedly. “I’ll pick you up at 7?” He didn’t leave much room for argument, and she smiled.

“Yes, that sounds awesome,” she said. She kissed him goodbye and she and Dorian stood there on their front stoop, waving at their significant others as they drove off to work and school.

Her phone chirped twenty minutes later when she was being grilled by Dorian for all the details of the night before.

_**-Just dropped Bull off. Are all of your friends going to threaten me if I hurt you, or just him?-** _

_-Ugh, sorry about that. I’m pretty sure all of them? Just a heads up-_

_**-You have dedicated friends, Moira-** _

Moira looked up from her phone to Dorian, who was gesticulating wildly with his empty mug and postulating eagerly about her and Solas consummating whatever it was that was between them.

_-Haha, they’re the best-_


End file.
